


Veriform's 'Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones'

by MazeltovCocktail



Series: Veriform's 'Star Wars' [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 23:34:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 45,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7594693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MazeltovCocktail/pseuds/MazeltovCocktail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something is wrong. Deeper than the war, deeper than the schism of creeds afflicting the Republic. The Dark side hangs like a veil across all futures, and Anakin Skywalker can't escape its touch. Even the clamor and madness of Coruscant only sharpens the constant discomfort of his unique connection to the Force, and as his training progresses, his suffering worsens. While a wasteful war rages, fought with machines and disposable men, the Jedi Order fights to preserve its principles as the Senate slides toward disaster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY...

STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES

 

It is a time of strife and division in the Galaxy.

In the wake of the dissolution of the Trade Federation and the confiscation

Of its contracts and assets by Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, the Senate has

Been struck with dissent. The charismatic former Jedi Count Dooku of Serenno has led

Thousands of systems in seceding from the Republic.

The newly-formed Confederacy of Independent Systems and the Galactic Republic

Are now at war, vying for control of the embattled Galaxy...

The Jedi, champions of the Republic, lead the Republic's new Grand Army of clones

In defense of the loyal systems. Overtaxed and spread too thin, the Jedi struggle with

Their responsibilities as their legacy as peacekeepers decays.

In this climate of suspicion, fear and martial conflict, Senator Padme Naberrie

Returns to Coruscant to vote on Chancellor Palpatine's new emergency initiative…

CHAPTER ONE: HYPORI

PADME

The Senate Docks were busy. Traffic moved sluggishly around the exposed platforms, speeders and the private ships of the representatives, delegates and Senators of a thousand systems. Standing at the viewscreen of her shuttle as it descended, preparing to land, Padme Naberrie reflected bitterly that it was less than a thousand now. Dooku and the Corporate Seats, the Techno Union, the Banking Clan, the Corporate Alliance and its subsidiaries...they had seen to that.

"This is Naboo One, requesting permission to land."

The rough voice of the ship's clone pilot cut through Padme's thoughts. She turned from the port viewscreen and glanced at the pilot, another of Fett's uncanny genetic duplicates. The man did his job well and without complaint, but the face, so often repeated on the holonet and on the propaganda posters that papered every wall on Coruscant, was unsettling.

"You are clear to land, Naboo One."

The ship, a gleaming silver Nubian K-type, glided in to its dock and settled onto its landing legs with a rumble of quieting engines. The clone released the control yoke and stood, turning.

"Another successful landing, Senator," he said, and saluted.

"Thank you, soldier," said Padme, forcing a smile.

Mace Windu and Senator Organa were waiting for her on the landing platform. Padme stepped out through the ship's airlock as it cycled open. "Master Windu," she said warmly, raising her voice to make herself heard over the noise of the docks. "It's good to see you."

Windu's eyes widened in surprise. Padme felt her smile falter.

"NO!" shouted Master Windu, throwing out a hand. An invisible fist closed on the front of Padme's robes and dragged her from the boarding ramp just as the world dissolved into heat, wind and light. Padme heard a loud ringing in her ears, and then her knees and palms struck the Duracrete surface of the landing platform and she rolled, crying out. Strong hands hauled her to her feet. Dull sounds fluttered around her head like moths at a light, half-heard and indistinct. She twisted, spitting blood, and saw her ship aflame, its landing legs buckled beneath the weight its sagging wings and twisted fuselage. A fire crew was already storming onto the landing pad, four uniformed clones with a high-pressure chemical hose attached to a mobile tanker droid held between them. Greyish foam gushed from the hose and splattered over the ship, smothering the blaze.

"We're leaving, Senator," shouted Windu over the chaos of the panicked docks. "Stay close, and stay down!" He pulled her toward the reassuring bulk of the Senate Building as a patrol of Senatorial Guards came rushing out from a nearby turbolift shaft. Padme stumbled along between Master Windu and a pale, sweating Senator Organa, coughing on the thick black smoke pouring from the wreck. The Senate Guards fell into step to her either side without a word, heavy blasters unlimbered and ready. Two of them jogged past, heading toward Padme's spaceship at the epicenter of the blast.

Padme blinked. Her thoughts were slow and foggy, her hearing still tenuous at best. Master Windu's voice faded in and out as he pulled her inside. Padme felt tears sting her eyes when she remembered her first real meeting with the man, just after Qui-Gon's death. Qui-Gon...but no, she had set aside the tangled mass of emotions surrounding the older man's death. Her dreams about him had finally ended.

"...said can you hear me, Senator?"

Padme straightened and pulled away from Mace. "Yes, Master Windu," she said, her voice only slightly cracked with strain. "What...what happened?"

Mace guided her to the marble bench that ran along the hall. She sat, brushing loose strands of hair out of her eyes. There was smoke in the hall and the Senators of a score of different worlds were shouting over one another as the Senate Guard struggled to restore order. Padme took a deep, shuddering breath. "The pilot?"

"Dead," said Windu, turning back to the doors leading to the docks. "My lady, I suggest we go to the Temple as soon as-"

"Senator!"

Padme jumped to her feet as Palpatine burst into the hall, trailing bureaucrats and petitioners like a dust storm. The Supreme Chancellor wore an ankle-length open blue robe embroidered heavily with whorls and scrollwork over a darker vest and loose trousers. He swept down the corridor, Senators scrambling out his way, and gripped Padme's hands in his own. "My dear," he said, "this is a travesty, an outrage, and I assure you it will not rest. I insist that you join me in my office. It isn't safe here. Master Windu, if you would accompany us?"

Mace nodded, still frowning at the doors as the smoke cleared.

The Chancellor's office on the top level of the Senate Dome was much as Padme remembered it, a short hall decorated with bas relief murals of the end of the First Sith War that opened out on a broad, half-circular chamber walled on the south side with plate glass. An enormous desk dominated the depression in the center of the room. A diminutive being in Jedi robes sat cross-legged on a low seat in front of the desk. He rose at Padme's approach, a terse smile curving his wrinkled mouth. "Senator Naberrie," said Master Yoda, planting his cane between his clawed feet. "Good to see you safe, it is."

"An attack at the Senate Docks," said Palpatine as he circled his desk, lined face taut with strain. "Inconceivable. Dooku and the Separatists have grown bold indeed."

"You're sure it was a Separatist attack?" said Bail Organa, moving into the room as Padme took a seat in front of the Chancellor's desk. Her ears were still ringing tinnily. Her thoughts remained fragmented and unclear.

"It would not be the first time," said Palpatine darkly. He sank down into his seat, hands laced together atop the hardwood surface of his desk. "Dooku has certainly proven himself willing to kill."

"Why the Senator?" asked Master Windu. "Reprisals for the Viceroy's death?"

Padme fought the impulse to flinch at the memory of Nute Gunray stepping off the edge of the Royal Dock and into empty air. "More likely it was an indirect strike at the Chancellor," she said coolly, pushing her troubled thoughts aside and slipping into the cold, amoral world of politics. It was a trick her father had taught her, a way to parse a situation objectively. "The war has dragged on, the Senate is on the verge of another collapse and the budget is in tatters. If the Chancellor loses votes, he loses control."

Palpatine looked deeply troubled. He turned to Yoda. "Have you an opinion, Master Yoda?"

Yoda shook his head slowly. "Clouded by the Dark Side, my vision is," he said. "Dooku's hand I sense, but nothing more."

Palpatine rose and turned to the window. He put a hand to the glass and said nothing for a long while. Padme could almost feel the weight on his shoulders, the four years of bloody, grinding war his term had overseen. He was as popular throughout the Galaxy as he had ever been, but the recent string of Separatist successes in the Outer Rim had shaken his support in the Senate. The war effort had been plagued by infighting in the Senate, Palpatine's initiatives barely finding the support to pass-and then only by the barest of margins and after lengthy debate. Public frustration with the Senate was at an all-time high. Wilhuff Tarkin, the Confederate Legate-Senator and the last conduit for diplomacy between the Separatists and the Republic, had been assaulted outside his apartment complex by a mob of furious citizenry and had barely escaped with his life.

"Your safety, Senator," said Palpatine, turning back to meet Padme's stare with his warm blue eyes, "is of the greatest importance. I'm afraid I must insist that you bolster your personal security."

Yoda nodded. "Agree with the Chancellor, the Council does," he said.

Senator Organa nodded. "I agree as well," he said.

Padme frowned. "I don't think that's necessary," she said. "More guards couldn't have prevented that attack, not if my clone missed the signs."

"I had in mind a different caliber of watchman," said Palpatine, glancing at Yoda and Mace. "Master Yoda, Master Windu, am I right in assuming that Master Kenobi and young Skywalker are on Coruscant at the moment?"

"You are," said Yoda.

Obi-Wan, and Anakin. Padme had seen them perhaps three times since the disaster of Theed's retaking. Once at Qui-Gon's official memorial, a vast shuffle of robed mourners and political opportunists. Once at the beginning of the Outer Rim Campaigns, a brief exchange of hellos at a state dinner, and once just a year previous in passing in the Senate offices. Anakin had been alone, gaunt and red-eyed, dressed in long, roughspun robes. He had looked so different from the dirty youth Qui-Gon had taken from Tatooine. They had exchanged awkward greetings, traded pleasantries, and then parted ways.

Palpatine raised a thin white eyebrow. "Surely old friends would be less of an intrusion on your duties, Senator? Master Yoda, I'm certain the Council can spare two of its own to safeguard an ally."

"Mmm," said Yoda. He sounded thoughtful. "An excellent idea, it is. With your permission, Senator, Master Kenobi and his apprentice to your protection I will assign."

"My security—" began Padme, frustrated.

"Is insufficient," said Mace firmly. "Master Kenobi is one of our best, my lady. It would ease the Council's mind if you accepted our decision, at least for the present."

"For the present, then," said Padme, frowning.

Palpatine smiled sadly. "We live in dark times, my dear," he said. His smile faded, replaced by a look of weariness and sorrow. "May the Force be with you, Senator."

"And you, Chancellor," said Padme. She stood to leave, Senator Organa falling into step beside her. The office door hissed open and a tall, dark-skinned man with cropped black hair and a stern, angry countenance stepped through. He wore a crisp grey uniform with blue and red insignia on its breast. Padme stopped where she stood. "Admiral Panaka," she said quietly. "It's good to see you."

"Senator Naberrie," snapped Panaka, without once looking at her. He strode toward the Chancellor's desk, hands clasped behind his back. Padme watched him for a second, and then Senator Organa gestured toward the door and they left the office as Panaka and the Chancellor began to discuss fleet movements with Windu and Yoda.

The hallway outside the Chancellor's office was cold. Padme stopped, folding her arms. "Go on without me," she said to Senator Organa as he turned, arching a dark eyebrow. "I'll catch up. I want to stop in on the Gungan legate."

"As you wish," said Bail. "I'll look for you in the Rotunda, Senator."

Padme smiled, waited until he had gone, and then took a turbolift to the Senate Atrium. With the house in session, foot traffic in the echoing space with its ornamental fountains and lush vegetation was sparse. Padme drifted between rows of painstakingly trimmed and cared-for trees with wavy purple foliage. She found the memorial in the shadow of a particularly large tree. They had sculpted him in a meditative pose, one hand on his chin, the other open at his side. He seemed to be looking off across the Atrium, past the fountains and statuary, past the Rotunda to the distant sky of Coruscant. Padme stared at him for a long while, hardly feeling the tears that traced their paths down her cheeks.

"I miss you," she said to the silent marble effigy.

Qui-Gon stared through her, and said nothing.

GRIEVOUS

The droid lines advanced over the bodies of a legion of fallen clones, their metal feet crushing white plasteel armor as they neared the wreck of the sphere section of the _lucrehulk-_ class cruiser _Aat'sor._ The burst and gutted command sphere had been playing host to a small contingent of Republic holdouts and, more importantly, their commanders. Jedi. General Grievous watched the advance from the boarding ramp of his personal shuttle, a beetle-like Neimodian model Count Dooku had given him as a gift. His cloak snapped and fluttered behind him in the cool wind of Hypori's northern continent as he clung one-handed to one of the ramp's hydraulic struts.

The droids below proceeded, firing as they marched, and halted a hundred meters from the crashed sphere, skeletal B-1 models and hulking B-2's with their smooth, knife-like builds and integrated repeating blasters. The last clones defending the sphere fell or were dragged from the outlying maze of wreckage and shot point-blank. Grievous felt a thrill of anticipation. He turned back toward his shuttle. "Patch me through to the broadcasters," he snarled at the MagnaGuard standing just inside the shuttle's airlock. A moment later he felt something click in his chest, a circuit completing itself. His harsh breath echoed over the broad and muddy valley. "You have fought valiantly, Jedi.

"I am impressed."

Grievous's shuttle started forward as he spoke, its engines firing with a soft thrum of power. He tightened his grip, the boarding strut squealing in protest, as the shuttle left the bluff and banked down toward the sphere. "As a reward for your bravery and skill," he rasped, "I will kill you myself."

The sea of battle droids passed by beneath the shadow of the shuttle. Grievous narrowed his eyes, staring at the skeletonized bulk of the cruiser _Aat'sor,_ at its towering superstructure, warped and twisted by its crash landing. He was past the droids, flying toward an especially large tear in the hull. His ruined face worked behind his mask, torn muscles twitching pointlessly. This was what Dooku had promised him in return for his services. This was why he had plotted and schemed and directed a thousand monotonous operations against the Republic, carrying out the convoluted schemes of the Sith.

Revenge.

The shuttle slammed through the ragged hole in the _Aat'sor_ 's hull. Grievous leapt free of his ship's boarding ramp, heedless of the seventy meters between himself and the wrecked cruiser's lowest deck. He fell like a stone, plummeting through the air to land with an echoing crash on a half-intact storage level. Shadows fell across him, light pouring through the shattered hull in dim, diffuse bars. Grievous slipped through the dimness and the dark, his clawed feet clanking loudly. The sound of his footfalls echoed and reechoed from the walls. He slipped down another level, and then another, swarming down empty turbolift shafts and dropping through holes in the deck. He could almost smell the Jedi, though he had smelled nothing in the four years since his accident and recreation. He could almost taste their blood.

"What was that?" came a loud, nervous voice.

"Be quiet, Sha." A second voice, cultured and mature. Ki-Adi Mundi of the Jedi Council. "Maintain your focus."

Grievous coughed violently, let the sound hang in the air and then dropped through a gaping rent in the deck and onto a support beam. The loud _clang_ as his claws struck the metal struck the Jedi below silent. He scuttled along the beam, silent for all the weight of his hateful Durasteel shell. A moment later and the voices resumed. "It's everywhere," hissed the nervous voice. Sha. "I can hear it."

"That is _enough_ ," said Ki-Adi.

"Silence," said another voice, deep and almost unintelligibly rough. "I sense something."

Grievous craned his neck over the edge of the beam. The Jedi were clustered together in the center of the yawning cavern that had been the sphere's reactor core, now a cold and blackened jungle of twisted girders and strewn garbage. There were six of them. The Cerean, Mundi, and Shaak Ti, a red-skinned Togruta, both on the Council. With them were another, younger Cerean, a hulking Whipid, a blue-skinned female Twi'Lek, and a young, terrified-looking human with a patchy beard. Mundi was speaking to the Whipid in a low voice, saying something Grievous couldn't quite hear. The young human was moving restlessly around the expansive reactor chamber, his wide eyes darting between shadows.

It was as good a place to start as any.

Grievous flung himself off of the beam, silent as a ghost. The young Jedi looked up a moment too late to avoid his fate. The General's weight bore down on his chest, crushing it like a tin can. Grievous straightened up atop the boy's mangled corpse, brushing his cloak back over his left shoulder. He flexed his clawed toes, gripped the human's skull in one foot, and eyed the other Jedi. _Everything I have been promised. Everything I've worked for._

"Sha," Ki-Adi said in horror, his voice soft.

"No!" screamed the Twi'Lek.

Grievous plucked two lightsabers from his cloak and ignited them as the others charged him. He did not wait for them; instead he flung himself headlong away from the corpse and into their midst. His lightsabers were a blur around him, turning a dozen blows in the space of an instant. He laughed raggedly and spun, stabbing at the Whipid. The tusked Jedi recoiled, parrying with frantic speed. Grievous kicked out with a clawed leg and caught the Twi'Lek in the chest, sending her flying. She hit the ground twenty yards away and did not get up. He roared, the sound echoing like murder from the curved walls of the spent reactor core. Shaak Ti flew at him and he swatted her aside, wielding his sabers in either hands or feet with equal ease as he spun and twisted, contorting his mechanical body. Four years had given him time to learn his new limitations, to discover a new prowess.

Dooku had taught him well.

The Jedi rushed the General as one, sabers raised. He bent his legs and leapt forty feet straight up, catching the edge of a piece of the blasted reactor assembly and dragging himself up onto it. He vanished into the shadows, alive with violent glee. At last they would know what it was they faced, the author of so many of their defeats. General Grievous, warlord of the Kaleesh, Supreme Commander of the Confederacy's Droid Armies. He scuttled along the curve of the reactor assembly and then launched himself again through the air. Mundi saw him coming and managed to throw himself out of the way. Grievous hit the ground and threw his entire body into a lunatic lunge with his right-hand saber. The green blade punched through the Whipid Jedi's chest and out his back. The Jedi gave a hoarse moan and collapsed, smoking. Grievous bounded over the corpse, bulling past Shaak Ti and the younger of the two Cereans as they moved to intercept him. He turned in mid-stride, catching the Togruta woman's thrust at his chest between his lightsabers. He leaned toward her, eyes narrowed, and heard the young Cerean approaching at a run from behind.

He lashed out with a foot and seized the Cerean's skull in his claws, keeping Shaak Ti at bay with great sweeping slashes. The Cerean struggled, lightsaber forgotten in the dirt. Grievous slammed his head against the filthy deck and it broke with an echoing crunch. He flung the body away, laughing as Shaak Ti cried out in wordless anguish and threw herself at him with redoubled ferocity. Vengeance filled him with a savage pleasure. He disarmed Ti with a practiced flick of his left-hand saber and slammed her to the ground beneath his foot, claws digging into the flesh of her stomach. Her dark eyes narrowed and Grievous snarled in anger and disgust as he was caught in the Force and thrown twenty meters to slam into a wall of wreckage. He rolled to his feet, his cloak tearing on a jagged protrusion from the deck, and caught Ki-Adi's saber across both of his own. The Cerean Jedi fought with admirable serenity, his blue lightsaber slicing effortlessly through the air. Grievous parried, jabbed and gave ground. Shaak Ti and the Twi'Lek joined the fray. He ducked, wove, spun and jumped. He turned their strikes and slashed at them, shifting forms at random.

A snap-kick flung Shaak Ti ten yards into a pile of scrap. Grievous hacked the Twi'Lek's arms off and stabbed her through the throat in a single looping movement. She slumped to the deck, dead, and it was only he and Mundi, a Master of the Jedi Council. Grievous snatched up the dead Twi'Lek's lightsaber in one foot and ignited it. He stood, balancing on one clawed foot, staring at Ki-Adi. The Cerean brought his saber up slowly to the high guard. For a handful of seconds they stared at each other, eyes narrowed.

And then Grievous struck. Mundi ducked and weaved, turning his sabers. Grievous hammered at the Cerean's defenses, transferring lightsabers from limb to limb at lightning speed as he slashed and cut. After Dooku the Jedi seemed so slow, so sluggish and constrained. Grievous disarmed Mundi with a flourish and kicked the Cerean to the ground, pinning him with a foot.

"I am _General Grievous_ ," bellowed Grievous, thrusting his face close to the Cerean's to give the other man a clear look at his eyes. "Go back and tell your _Council_ I will have my revenge for the death of Kalee, for the death of Ronderu. Tell them I will wear their skins."

"I am not a messenger," spat the Master, blood flecking his lips.

Grievous's left arm split in two. He seized Mundi's throat. "You _will_ tell them," he choked out.

The General sprang away and fled before Mundi could strike, vanishing back up into the forest of girders and broken machinery. His heart sang with the thrill of murder, with the power of conducting battle from the front lines, of taking the light from an enemy's eyes with the strength of his own arms. His shuttle was waiting for him where he'd left it. He leapt up onto the landing ramp and stalked inside. As the ship turned and left the sphere, Grievous felt his lost hands shaking, though his metal ones were still and cold. For a moment, he had forgotten... He looked out through the viewscreen, out to where the droids were abandoning their encirclement. Mundi would flee undeterred.

Grievous coughed, hacking, and sank heavily into the pilot's seat. His claws tapped out a rhythm against the arms of the seat. He would kill them all before the war was done; every Jedi.

Every last one.

ANAKIN

Anakin stood beside Obi-Wan in the turbolift as it shot up the side of Senator Naberrie's apartment highrise. The view of Coruscant at midday was spectacular, but Anakin had seen the city-planet's sprawling vistas too often in his life to be truly awed. And besides, the attractions of the city had paled for him. He heard too much of its true voice, its presence in the Force. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and tugged at the collar of his dark overtunic. It was chafing his neck again.

Obi-Wan glanced at him. "Must you fidget?" he asked.

"I can't concentrate," said Anakin. "I've been trying to shut the planet out, but the exercises aren't working. I can still hear it, like a murmur."

"These things take time, Anakin," said Obi-Wan. He scratched his bearded chin. "Try not to worry. It took Qui-Gon years to teach me the basic disciplines."

The turbolift slowed and ground to a halt, clamps engaging. The lift doors slid open and Anakin stepped out into the apartment's luxurious entrance hall, a wide space centered on an ornamental pool in which colorful fish swam lazily, lit by the bronzium chandelier hanging from the ceiling. It was a stark contrast to Anakin's room at the Jedi Temple. He looked around with mild interest at the ornate furnishings, the sculptures and busts in their niches along the wall. The door furthest from the reflecting pool slid open and Senator Naberrie stepped into the room, flanked by a pair of Senate Guards. She looked just as she had on the day Anakin had met her in Watto's old parts shop, slender and beautiful with her oval-shaped face and long brown hair, caught up at the back of her head in an elegant knot. She wore a silver collar and belt over a trailing white dress. Strings of white seed pearls dangled from her ears. "Master Kenobi," she said warmly. "Anakin. It's good to see you."

"Likewise, Senator," said Obi-Wan, bowing as he took her hand.

Anakin forced a stiff smile. "The pleasure is all ours," he said.

"Please," said Padme, gesturing to the door. "Come in. It's been so long."

Anakin and Obi-Wan followed her into a wide, airy room with the breathtaking view that it seemed inevitably graced the apartment of every wealthy sentient on Coruscant. Anakin gave the skyline a cursory glance, then returned his attention to the Senator. Watching her walk was, he decided, a great deal more interesting than staring out at the sunset. Just the right amount of sway, and that dress didn't leave much about her legs to the imagination... He blinked as Obi-Wan elbowed him in the ribs without breaking stride. The older Jedi glared at him. Anakin grinned.

A tall, dark-skinned man with short, curly hair and a patch over his left eye stood waiting for them by the low couches in the center of the room. He wore a polished leather jerkin over a dark shirt and coarse tunic. "Captain Typho," said the Senator as she came to a halt beside the man and turned back to Anakin and Obi-Wan, "may I present Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and his Padawan, Anakin Skywalker."

"An honor," said Typho, shaking hands first with Obi-Wan and then with Anakin. He had a firm, decisive grip. "Commander Skywalker, I saw your maneuver at Naboo. Damned brilliant, if you don't mind me saying."

Anakin forced himself not to react. In his mind's eye he could see Admiral Tagge staring at him wide-eyed across the tactics table. He could see clones choking at his feet. "Got a lot of people killed."

"That's war," said Typho with a philosophical flip of one gloved hand. "People die."

"Captain Typho heads my security detail," said Padme.

Panaka's name hung unspoken in the silence.

"I'm confident we'll be able to get to the bottom of this morning's attempt on your life, Senator," said Obi-Wan. "Captain Typho, have you gleaned anything from the ship?"

"Trace chemicals," said Typho, frowning. "Nothing conclusive, though. I believe the bomb was planted on Naboo, though why it didn't detonate at once is beyond me."

"At any rate," said Padme, raising her voice slightly, "I have a session to prepare for. Captain Typho can acquaint you with the building's security systems, if you'll excuse me?"

"Of course, my lady," said Anakin, half-smiling. "We have everything under control."

"Good evening, then," said Padme, and she swept out of the room through the nearest of three identical Durasteel doors. Anakin forced himself not to watch her go.

Typho folded his arms. "She's been under considerable strain," he said. "The new Queen's had her back to Naboo twice a month for debriefings and public appearances, and the mess in the Senate is taking its toll as well."

"The Senator's temperament needs no explanation," said Obi-Wan. "It is a trying time for us all. Under the circumstances I would say she maintains a remarkable poise and composure."

"Remarkably poised," Anakin agreed, earning a swift glare from his master.

Typho seemed not to notice. He was staring out the plate glass window at the city. "I'm damned glad the Council sent you," he said, turning back. "I'm out of my depth on this one."

Obi-Wan sat down on one of the low couches, hands on his knees. He said nothing for a long while. Anakin drifted over to stand with Typho at the window. He let his eyes drift out of focus and opened himself to the Force, let it pour into him. It was like opening the floodgates on a dam. Sensation swamped his mind, drowned his senses and submerged his thoughts. The base emotions of a trillion beings, love, lust, hate, fear, greed, jealousy, worry, all mixed together in a potent slurry. Anakin took a deep breath and fought for focus and clarity, imposing order on his mind. Gradually, the tumult receded to a dull roar, and then to nothing.

He expanded his senses, let his perceptions encompass Padme's apartments. He sensed Typho beside him, resolute and worried. Obi-Wan, thoughtful. Servants, Senate Guards, Padme's private security detail...and the Senator herself, alone in her office. Her thoughts were ordered and guarded, but Anakin could feel the sorrow and exhaustion rolling off of her in waves. He withdrew. The city lay beneath him, lighting up as the sun set on the iron horizon. He turned back to Obi-Wan, still sitting at the couch. Typho had left, and the shadows on the floor had changed position.

"You lost track of time," said Obi-Wan, not looking up from his apparent examination of the carpet's pattern. "But your focus was excellent. An improvement, Anakin."

Anakin nodded, and neither of them spoke for a minute or two.

Obi-Wan stood up and crossed the room to stand beside Obi-Wan. "Have you any suspicions as to Senator Naberrie's malefactors?" he asked.

"Count Dooku is the obvious choice," said Anakin. He raked a hand through his short hair, brushing his Padawan learner's braid with his thumb. "From what Master Windu told us, I think Padme has the right idea. The Count could destabilize the Chancellor by killing the Senators in his camp. It could bog down our whole war effort."

"I agree," said Obi-Wan. "Anakin, I want you to meet with Senator Naberrie's closest colleagues, the other politicians who support Palpatine's policy. You'll start tomorrow before the Senate is in session, and I think it's best you go in company with the Senator. I'll be leaving her protection in your hands while I pursue another line of inquiry."

Anakin had long ago given up questioning Obi-Wan's penchant for making vague statements. He nodded. "Yes, Master."

"That's settled then," said Obi-Wan. He looked tired. Everyone looked tired these days. With the war it was always one thing or another. "You can—"

Obi-Wan's comlink chimed. Frowning, Anakin's Master retrieved the device from his belt and triggered it. A finger-sized holographic image of Master Windu snapped into being above its projector plate. "We just lost Hypori," said Windu heavily. "Masters Mundi and Ti are returning to Coruscant now. Aayla, K'Kruhk, Sha'Gi, Tarr Seir...Ki-Adi says they were murdered by a cyborg, a lightsaber duelist called General Grievous. The Separatists have a direct line to the Galactic Core, now. It's only a matter of time before they try for Coruscant."

Anakin felt a sharp stab of grief. Tarr Seir had been in his dueling class with Master Koth for three years, and the mild-mannered, sagacious Whipid, K'Kruhk, had accompanied he and Obi-Wan on several missions in Hutt Space. He'd liked the Jedi.

"Damn," swore Obi-Wan. He set the comlink down on a polished wooden end table and began to pace, robes sweeping over the carpet. "Six Jedi..." He paused and rubbed at his temples. "We'll need to withdraw at least one of the rim fleets to protect Coruscant."

"The Senate won't like it," said Mace darkly. "The Rim Seats, what few of them haven't gone over to Dooku, are going to raise hell. Come in when you can." The hologram vanished.

Obi-Wan sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He turned to Anakin. "Inform the Senator that I've gone to the Temple," he said. "I'll need to consult with High Command and the Admiralty, and it's possible I may be sent off-planet. I have every confidence that you can fulfill this mission in my absence, Anakin."

"Of course, Master," said Anakin. He had learned to take things like the fall of a planet to enemies of the Republic in stride.

Obi-Wan snatched up the comlink and fairly dashed from the room, pausing at the door to shout

"And good luck!" before vanishing out into the entrance hall.

A minute later Anakin saw his master's speeder pull away from the building's docking platform. He sighed, clasping his hands behind his back, and turned to the Senator's office door. He supposed he should tell her about Hypori, but somehow he couldn't quite bring himself to burst in on her work with a portent of doom. She'd been through enough, the war on top of Theed's occupation and Amidala's murder. He could feel her through the walls, the barely-contained stress and fatigue wound around the bright core of her determination. He sighed and crossed the room to knock on her door. There was no answer. Anakin pressed a hand to the palm pad and stepped into the Senator's office as the door slid open. It was a small room, windowless but well-lit with wall-to-wall bookshelves and a heavy hardwood desk. Padme was asleep with her cheek on a stack of documents, Senate reports and military memos. Anakin stood in the doorway for a short while. A loose strand of brown hair hung across her face.

He turned and went back to the window, leaving her to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO: THE SHADOW

OBI-WAN

Obi-Wan Kenobi jogged down the branching halls of the Jedi Temple. He skidded around a corner and flung himself into the nearest turbolift shaft, stabbing the button for the basement archives. The turbolift plummeted and Obi-Wan folded his arms. He composed himself, walling away his emotions. He could sense the grave silence of the Council far below him. So many Jedi dead since the start of the war. It had started with Depa and Qui-Gon on Naboo, slain by Darth Maul. Obi-Wan forced himself not to clench his fists at the memory of that tattooed face, those cruel yellow eyes staring at him over Qui-Gon's slashed and smoking body. Maul had killed others since. This General Grievous was the last thing the Order needed. Another murderer.

Plo Koon was waiting in the dark cloakroom at the base of the turbolift shaft. He gripped Obi-Wan's hand by way of a greeting, his claws leaving red marks on the human's skin. "Master Kenobi," he said in his flat, filtered voice. The Kel-Dor Jedi headed the Council Watchmen, the Order's investigative arm to which Obi-Wan had been assigned after his knighting.

"Master Plo," said Obi-Wan as they left the cloakroom and proceeded down a long, bare-walled corridor. "Have we anything to go on?"

"Qymaen jai Shaleel," said Plo without hesitation.

"The Kaleesh?" asked Obi-Wan, raising an eyebrow. "The one who died in the Rotunda?"

"The murderer mentioned Kalee," said Plo. "He gave it as the reason for his seeking revenge against the Order."

"Ah, our injunction in favor of the Huk," said Obi-Wan sadly. "Shaleel was a war hero on Kalee. If he survived, I suppose vengeance would be his natural inclination."

"Indeed," said Plo as they approached an airlock door set flush in the Duracrete wall. He waved a clawed hand and the door slid open.

The Council was standing in a domed, dimly-lit chamber walled with plate glass behind which luminescent fish swam in slow patterns through dark water. The four slain Jedi were laid in state on the cold metal floor. Obi-Wan forced himself to look, though his hand flew to his mouth at the sight of the dead. Aayla, famed in the Order for her beauty, had been mutilated. Her throat was a scorched ruin, her arms hacked off at the shoulders. Tarr Seir's long skull was crushed and deformed. Master Daakman Barrek's Padawan, Sha'Gi, was even worse. His chest had been smashed almost flat, ribs protruding at odd angles from the gory mess. Only K'Kruhk looked peaceful, a single burn discoloring the whitish fur of his chest.

Ki-Adi stood beside Shaak Ti. The female Togruta's face was bruised and swollen and her right arm was in a sling. Obi-Wan felt the sorrow flowing through the room. Yoda sat with one hand pressed to his forehead, tears leaking down his wrinkled cheeks. "Master Obi-Wan," he said, not looking up. "A tragedy, this is. So many lost."

"What warrior can hold his own against five Jedi?" asked Mace Windu.

"He was trained in the forms," said Ki-Adi. The Cerean's voice was hollow and dead.

"A deadly fighter," said Shaak Ti, bowing her horned head.

Oppo Rancisis slithered toward Obi-Wan, his heavy coils hissing over the floor. He came to a halt beside the younger man, stroking his long white beard with a clawed hand. "K'Kruhk's death opens a seat on the Council," he said in his low, rasping voice. "We have selected you as his replacement, Obi-Wan."

Obi-Wan turned to the aged Thisspiasian Jedi. Rancisis' dark eyes were humorless and cold. He turned to the rest of the Council. Yoda nodded in agreement, as did Mace and the others. Master Plo put a hand on his shoulder. "You are the best man for the position, Obi-Wan," he said. "I know it is a heavy responsibility, and that your Padawan's training is not complete, but...these are extraordinary times. We must ask this of you."

Obi-Wan said nothing for a long moment. "I am honored," he said at last, subdued and quiet. "I accept the appointment."

There was a silence. Mace Windu nodded approvingly.

"The Dark Side clouds all," said Yoda, leaning on his stick as he limped to Aayla's side. He reached out and closed her eyes. He looked up at Obi-Wan. "Spread thin we are, by this war. Vulnerable we have become. Limited, our choices are."

"What is our course of action?" asked Obi-Wan.

"It's simple," said Mace Windu, his voice hard and cold. "The Sith are at the root of this. The Council is sure of it. Only by discovering them and putting an end to their machinations can we end this war and restore the peace. To that end, you will investigate these assassination attempts against Senator Naberrie. We think a connection exists."

Obi-Wan looked down at the bodies of the fallen Jedi. "I will do so," he said. "My Padawan can see to the Senator's protection."

"May the Force be with you, Obi-Wan," said Mace.

Obi-Wan turned and left the room, fighting back tears. A cold anger welled up inside him and he clenched his fists, breathing through gritted teeth. There had been so much death.

He took a speeder from the Temple to the Senate Docks. Padme's destroyed yacht was still in its berth, cordoned off by a unit of clone security officers. They admitted Obi-Wan to the bay without a word and he strode toward the wreckage of the ship, troubled thoughts roiling in his mind. He passed a hand over one of the yacht's bent and melted stabilizer fins. Traces of fear and shock still clung to the chromium plating. His foot nudged something lying on the deck. He knelt and retrieved a scorched clone helmet, its visor cracked and bubbly.

The sensation as Obi-Wan's fingers touched the plasteel was electric. He saw clones dying by the hundreds, caught in blaster fire or drifting through space around dead warships. He saw identical faces masked in blood, heaped like cordwood on a thousand smoke-shrouded battlefields. He saw his own white-armored hands wiring a cylinder to the boarding ramp hydraulics. The helmet slipped from from Obi-Wan's hands and bounced away across the deck. He stared at it, aghast, and then at the clones standing with their backs to him. How could one of them have done this? They were conditioned in their birthing tanks to serve and obey, programmed at a genetic level to fight for the Republic. Obi-Wan stood for a long while, his heart beating hard against his breast. He looked again at the clones, silent and obedient.

To Kamino, then.

ANAKIN

Anakin paced the Senator's darkened apartment, restless and uncomfortable. Obi-Wan had been gone for most of the night without any word. He wasn't worried, not precisely, but Obi-Wan almost always made a point of staying in touch.

"Is something bothering you, Anakin?"

He stopped and turned. Padme was standing in the doorway to her bedroom, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Her dark hair was artfully disheveled, her eyes bright. Anakin shrugged. "It's nothing, Senator," he said. "You should sleep. The voting on the Outer Rim Campaigns is only a few hours from now."

The Senator stepped into the room and moved to one of the couches. She sat, looking past Anakin at the city outside the window. "It won't be much of a debate, after Hypori," she said bitterly. "The Senate will want to protect itself. They'll vote the fleets back to Coruscant."

"And the Separatists take the Outer Rim," said Anakin, keeping the scorn in his voice to a bare minimum. "Better to lose the capital than the war."

"The Senate won't relocate," said Padme. "It sends the wrong message. If we're seen as weak then the war is as good as over anyway."

"I disagree," said Anakin. "Respectfully."

"Oh?" asked Padme, arching an eyebrow. "And what would you do?"

Anakin scratched his chin. "Martial law," he said after a long pause.

Padme's brow furrowed. "I hardly think-"

"Relax, Senator," said Anakin, chuckling. "I was only joking. I don't think the Senate has to stay in one place to look strong, though. They could run the Republic just as well from Tatooine, and it might do something for their credit with the Outer Rim worlds to be seen living somewhere outside their climate-sealed apartments on Coruscant. There's a reason those people like Dooku."

Padme shook her head, smiling. "You haven't changed at all," she said. She stood up and joined him near the window, her arms folded. The sleeves of her silvery-white nightdress swept over the carpeted floor. The light filtering in from outside played over her soft features. "Do you miss Tatooine, yet?" she asked.

Anakin shrugged. "I went back once," he said, after a few seconds. "To free my mother. It's still the same dirty backwater.

"I don't miss it."

Padme looked at him. "Good," she said with a sad half-smile. "It didn't suit you."

Anakin was about to answer her when he felt a violent ripple in the Force, like glass ground against bare skin. "Get down!" he shouted, ripping his lightsaber from his belt and hitting the ignition plate. Blue light washed over the room just as the doors leading to the entrance hall burst open and a shadow sprinted into the room on silent feet. Anakin didn't wait for an introduction. He flung himself headlong across the room in a dizzying bound and swung his saber overhand at the cloaked and hooded figure. A fizzling, hissing red blade snapped to life and parried his strike. He hit the ground and stumbled past the intruder, blocking frantically as it slashed and hacked at him. He caught a glimpse of tattooed skin, red and black. Yellow eyes, narrowed to slits, stared out at him from beneath the cowl. Darth Maul. Anakin directed a dizzying backhand at the Zabrak's eyes, but Maul blocked it.

"Get out of here!" Anakin shouted to Padme, not daring to break his concentration to look at her. Maul hammered at him, his lightsaber flashing in the dark like a tongue of flame. Anakin turned a lightning-swift jab and only narrowly avoided being spitted alive as the saberstaff's second blade thrummed to life beside his knee. He retreated before a fresh onslaught of blows, already breathing hard. Maul, he knew with a frightening certainty, was the better swordsman.

"Just like Jinn," snarled the Zabrak, driving Anakin back across the floor with a flurry of sweeping slashes. "Slow. Stupid. Weak." He spun his saberstaff and hacked at Anakin's head.

Anakin caught the blow and held Maul's saber as the other man leaned against the strike, forcing both blades gradually toward Anakin's face. Anakin forced himself not to cry out. Light from the glowing weapons illuminated the Sith's tattooed face in nauseating detail. The right side was chiseled and hungry, the left waxy and distorted like a half-melted candle. They broke apart and Anakin wrenched his lightsaber around to block a looping cut at his legs that left one of the room's ornamental chairs smoking on the floor in two pieces. Maul lunged and Anakin barely forced the blade aside, backpedaling rapidly. The Sith's gloved fist connected with the side of his face and he staggered, reeling over the floor. He caught a glimpse of Padme standing in her bedroom door, something in her hands, and then Captain Typho bulled through the hall door and opened fire on Maul with a shout of anger. The Sith twisted, saber flying around him in a blurred web of light. Typho's blaster bolts ricocheted around the room, scorching the walls and setting fire to the carpeting in several places.

Anakin scrambled to put himself in front of the Senator, keeping his eyes on Maul. The Sith was moving into his stride now, seething with the Dark Side. Any moment now he would redirect one of Typho's shots and kill the Captain. Anakin got his feet.

"Down!" shouted Padme.

Anakin ducked just as the Senator fired a sleek silver holdout blaster over his head. Maul's composure snapped. The Sith's cancerous eyes flicked between Padme, Anakin and the Captain. He unleashed a furious roar, crossed the room in a single enormous leap and crashed through the plate glass window. Anakin and Typho raced after him, but the night was empty. The Sith was gone. Anakin deactivated his lightsaber and slid it through its holding loop on his belt. His nerves buzzed. _I would have died._ He glanced back at Padme, standing pale and composed in the doorway. "You're not a bad shot," he said, grinning. "For a politician."

"My lady," said Typho, turning to Padme. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Captain," she said bloodlessly. The blaster dropped from her fingers and hit the floor with a dull _clunk_. She stepped past it and went to the window. Her eyes narrowed as she looked through the gaping hole in the plate glass. "We almost had him." There was a steely hatred in her voice, disturbing in its intensity.

"Step away from the window, Senator," said the Captain, taking Padme's arm. He drew her back, though she seemed to want to stay.

Anakin's comlink chimed. He took it from his pocket and keyed.

"Anakin," came Obi-Wan's tired voice from the comlink's speaker. "I apologize for leaving on such short notice, but I must go to Kamino on Council business. I trust you can carry on with the Senator's protection detail until I-"

"Maul was here," said Anakin, interrupting the older man. "She's alive and unharmed. I'm taking her to the Chancellor."

"Maul was _there?"_ said Obi-Wan, his voice tight and dark with old wounds. "Anakin..."

"He ran," said Anakin. He glanced at Typho. "Captain, prepare a speeder. We're going to the Senate. The Chancellor needs to hear about this. Master, don't worry about us. I'll report in when we reach the Senate."

"May the Force be with you, Anakin."

"And you." He silenced the comlink and pocketed it.

"It's the middle of the night," said Padme stiffly, gathering her shawl around her. "The Chancellor can wait to be informed. Perhaps the Jedi Council-"

"With all due respect, Senator," Anakin cut in, "I'm heading this operation, and I say we go to the Chancellor."

Padme narrowed her eyes, mouth a thin line, and then swept back into her bedroom. Typho departed. Anakin paced, hands clasped together behind his back to keep them from shaking. Had he been alone, had Typho arrived even a moment later... He had never been able to imagine Qui-Gon's death, had never understood how Darth Maul had murdered the Jedi Master who had been so wise, so serene and powerful. Now he knew. He took a deep breath and retrieved his comlink again, tapping in the private code he'd been given. He heard a hiss of static, then a click as the signal connected.

"Anakin." It was well past midnight, but the Chancellor sounded alert. "What is it, my boy?"

"There's been another attempt on the Senator's life," said Anakin. "Darth Maul infiltrated her apartment somehow, but-"

"Thanks heavens you're alive, Anakin," said Palpatine. He sounded drained now, drained and worried. "You should leave the Senator's apartments as soon as you can. Bring her here to my quarters at the Senate." A note of pride entered the aging statesman's voice. "Once again, Anakin, you have shown your worth. Not any Jedi could do as you did."

"Thank you, Chancellor," said Anakin. "If you'll excuse me, I should get the Senator to her speeder. We'll join you inside the hour."

"Good luck, Anakin."

The Senator's speeder arrived at the Chancellor's private airdock only minutes later. Palpatine and a detail of Senate Guards came out to meet them as they disembarked the sleek vehicle, Typho and Anakin flanking the cloaked and hooded Senator. Flickering deflector shields sprang to life around the bay the moment the speeder's engines cut out.

"We have been struck," said Palpatine heavily. "Nineteen senators murdered. A freighter from Corellia brought in a shipment of commando droids in a shielded compartment. Maul, I suspect, was intended to account for your special protection but, luckily," he offered Anakin a tight smile, "the Count underestimated his agent's opponent."

Anakin could think of nothing to say. At his side, Padme had put a hand over her mouth and closed her eyes. Nineteen Senators. How could nineteen of the best-protected sentients in the Galaxy be killed in a single night?

Palpatine led them into his suite of rooms where his blue-skinned Chagrian chamberlain, Mas Amedda, and a veritable regiment of Senate Guards were waiting. The Chancellor turned to Padme. "You will forgive me, my lady, if I leave you briefly," he said. "I'm afraid I must meet with Masters Yoda and Windu to discuss the situation. Anakin, if you wish to come along...?"

"My place is at the Senator's side," said Anakin. "Thank you, Chancellor."

Palpatine offered another brief, distracted smile. "As you wish," he said, and then clasped Padme's hand briefly before sweeping out of the room with his guards and Amedda in tow. Anakin began mechanically to pace the room, his robes hissing over the polished floor. Padme sank into a chair, a thumb and two forefingers pressed to her forehead. Anakin could feel exhaustion and disbelief rolling off of her in waves, as though she were a bead dropped into water. He felt numb, shocked by the murders. How could it have happened?

How?

DOOKU

Geonosis. The bleak air was thick with smoke from the droid foundries beneath the planet's barren and crater-pocked surface. Long, sleek _Providence-_ class carrier/destroyers rose ponderously from the vast dry docks located at the foot of the mountain range nearest Poggle's hive. Count Dooku of Serenno watched them rise on columns of blue-white thruster fire, his cloak whipping around him in the dusty wind. The grainy hologram of a hooded, faceless man flickered at his side. "Hypori proceeded even better than we expected," said Palpatine. "The Council has inducted Kenobi into their ranks and Skywalker is alone, independent of his Master for the first time."

"Then you are still intent on offering the boy a place in the Triumvirate?" asked Dooku.

"He will be a powerful ally," said Palpatine. "I have seen to it that he will soon find the pull of the Dark Side an...unavoidable temptation."

"We should direct our focus toward the Coruscant campaign," said Dooku. "Murdering your opposition was...inspired, if brutal. The Senate will require only a reassurance that you can protect them in their darkest hour."

"Yes," said Palpatine. "Yes, my friend. Coruscant will show the diseased and mewling Senate what its Chancellor can do." He rubbed his wrinkled hands together. "Our life of skulking in the shadows will be a thing of the past." The cowled face turned toward Dooku. "Skywalker will join me soon, and more than likely leave the Jedi Order in the process. I intend the attack to be his baptism into the Sith. Together, the three of us will chart a new course through Galactic history."

Dooku allowed himself a faint smile. He was under no illusions as to his mentor's loyalty to their partnership in the nominal Triumvirate. Darth Sidious's attitude toward Maul alone made it abundantly clear that to the Sith Lord all assets were expendable ones. Except, apparently, Skywalker. For months Palpatine had spoken of nothing, and for years he had evinced an interest in the boy's training. It was not unusual to see the two of them together on Holonet broadcasts. Whenever the two attended the same public events Palpatine sought the boy at and put him at his side, a kindly father figure for the handsome, fatherless Skywalker.

"You plan to test the boy before the fact, then," Dooku said after a long silence. The _Providence-_ classes were nothing but specks against the grey sky, the rumble of their thrusters muted by distance. Dust blew over the wide valley.

"Yes," said Sidious. "But first he must be isolated, and confronted. Maul, perhaps, or Ventress if you can spare her. Either would make a fitting crucible for his talents. He could defeat neither without drawing on his anger, on his hatred and his passion."

The implication was clear. One of their apprentices would have to die at Skywalker's hands for the boy to prove himself. "Maul, then," said Dooku. "The boy has a grudge against him." _A grudge I share. We need not discuss that triviality, though. Not until Qui-Gon's murderer is dead._

"Yes," said Sidious. "Maul would be more fitting. As it happens, though, I have an assignment for young Ventress. Master Kenobi has, it seems, discerned enough of the true machinations behind the attempts on Senator Naberrie's life to suspect a link with Kamino and the clones. He is readying himself to travel there as we speak. I want Asajj there to greet him."

"Very well," said Dooku. "I will arrange it."

"Kenobi must not contact our agents on Kamino," said Sidious. "Instruct your apprentice to do away with them. Discreetly." The cowl turned back to the foundry plain. Ranks of intimidating blue B-2 battle droids were marching up out of the tunnels at the foot of the slope Dooku and Sidious stood on. The droids' rubber-gripped feet pounded dully against the dead earth as they moved in perfect form toward the broad landing ramps of a _lucrehulk_ -class command sphere, absent its arms-studded torus.

Dooku nodded. "I will see that Kenobi finds nothing," he said. "Jango has requested-"

"Tell Fett to stay on Coruscant," snapped Sidious. "That he participated in the bombing at all was a colossal misstep on your part. He _is_ distinguishable from the clones, especially should a Jedi become involved in the investigation. We cannot afford to expose him to their scrutiny. Imagine, for a moment, that Master Yoda or Master Plo Koon were to discover Sith handiwork in the brain of the template for the entire Grand Army.

"We would be undone."

"We retain our standing in the Confederacy," said Dooku, stung and annoyed by Sidious's criticism. "Should the Republic grow mistrustful of their own army it would be a simple matter to crush it and replace it with a government of our choosing."

"No," said Sidious. "This alliance represents everything that must be cleansed from the veins of the Galaxy if we are truly to control it. Power must rest in our hands, and in our hands alone. The Separatists will forever maneuver for power and prestige, careless of any grand design." He made a fist. "No, Lord Tyranus. You will inform Fett that he is to stay where he is, accessible and inoffensive. Remind him...that he has a son to care for." The threat hung unspoken in the air.

Dooku looked at the man beside him. He felt a wave of distaste rise from his stomach, but he shut it away. It did not pay to show weakness in front of Sidious. "Very well," he said. "He will not be pleased. Master Fett is a man of action, not a public figure. Credits and threats will only stay his hand for so long, my Master."

"It will suffice for as long as we need him," said Sidious, and then the hologram was gone.

Dooku remained on the cliffside ledge for a while longer, staring out over the dust-swept plain as the droids boarded the command sphere. Doubtless when he returned to the hive there would be meetings to attend, fears to sooth and strategies to decide. Grievous was returning from his vengeful debut on Hypori, claws soaked in Jedi blood. The councilors were flushed with victory, greedy merchants playing at war. Dooku rubbed his chin with a weathered hand, dark eyes narrowed against the dry wind. Alone on the mountainside he sank down cross-legged and opened himself to the Force, to the dark waters of its furthest reaches. There would be time to contact Asajj later in the afternoon, time to threaten Fett's innocent son and take care of the dozen other things that required his attention.

Light and sound fell away.

The universe unfolded around Dooku. He knew peace and rage, stillness and vigor, the callousness of a frozen heart and the deepest passion imaginable. He was a Count. He was a Sith. He was one with the Force. Familiar currents moved and shifted around him. Qui-Gon's voice seemed to resound through nothingness, forever young and inquisitive, solemn and vibrant.

Gone. Forever, gone.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE: KAMINO

OBI-WAN

Obi-Wan's fighter slipped out of hyperspace ten minutes from Kamino's gravity well. The planet hung ahead of him, a ball of midnight blue water shrouded in dark, heavy clouds. The swampy continents were barely distinguishable against the backdrop of Kamino's constant storm cells. A full defense fleet of _Venator-_ class Star Destroyers hung in a defensive orbit around the planet, their pale grey hulls gleaming in the light of the system's distant sun. Obi-Wan watched as Kamino's stormy surface approached beyond the plasteel sheeting of his fighter's cockpit, framed by two maneuvering battleships. His approach vector would take him around the worst of the planet's roving storm cells, but turbulence was inevitable. He sighed and keyed a recognition code to the system fleet, announcing his arrival and destination. "System Command, this is General Kenobi. I have a meeting with the Prime Minister in an hour."

"General Kenobi this is Kamino system command," said a crisp, businesslike voice. "You are clear to land in Tipoca City, dock seven sector ten-Celerity Alpha."

"Thank you, command," said Obi-Wan. "Kenobi out." He deactivated the ship's comlink and took the control yoke, angling between a pair of Star Destroyers. The planet swelled, blocking out the void of its comparatively empty sector. The descent was hypnotic, a study in spiraling storm structures and the rhythm of waves visible from forty miles up. Tipoca City was a collection of flattened matte-grey durasteel domes rising up out of the water on eighty-meter support struts. Floodlights swept the storm-wracked sky around the colossal complex, piercing clouds and picking out the shuttle traffic in sporadic flashes.

Obi-Wan set his ship down on one of the city's rain-lashed landing platforms and climbed down to meet the Prime Minister and his reception committee. Prime Minister Lama Su was old for a Kaminoan, wrinkled and slightly bent. He walked with the aid of a cane cut from some polished hardwood and wore plain grey and white robes. A swarm of aides and functionaries surrounded him, standing at a respectful distance as he moved to clasp Obi-Wan's hand.

"General Kenobi," said the Prime Minister in a firm, raspy voice. He seemed not to notice the rain sheeting down around him as he turned back toward the welcoming light beyond the cycling entry doors to Tipoca's main dome. "It is most gratifying to meet you in person at last. Your record with our latest product line is most impressive, and now I hear you have been elevated to the Jedi Council. Great accomplishments for a man of your age."

"News travels fast, Prime Minister," said Obi-Wan, raising his voice to make himself heard over the deluge. "The Council sends its greetings."

They passed into the featureless white halls of the city's administrative quarter, a relatively deserted area. Lama Su dismissed his aides, who departed with much bowing and murmuring, and he and Obi-Wan stood facing each other for a long moment in the bright silence. Obi-Wan felt acutely aware of his sodden robes. He pushed back his hood and turned to look out through an observation window at one of the city's larger interior corridors, packed with Kaminoans in flowing white robes and with clones marching in lockstep formations.

"I find it difficult to believe that a Fett model would turn against its employers," said Su after a long pause. "You say you...sensed this betrayal?"

"I did," said Obi-Wan, not looking at the Prime Minister. He suppressed an instinctual upwelling of frustration at the carefully controlled skepticism in the older sentient's voice. The Kaminoans were not, as a rule, a species much given to mysticism. Their focus on the physical sciences had made them the greatest cloners in Galactic history, but it had left their minds infuriatingly narrow in some regards.

"Forgive me, General," said Su, moving slowly to Obi-Wan's side, "but the behavioral protocols we use to manage our clones are entirely foolproof. They could not possibly have disobeyed the most basic parameters of our contract with the Republic."

Obi-Wan folded his arms. "Nevertheless, Prime Minister, I would like to speak to the geneticists responsible for clone behavior routines."

"I have, of course, arranged an appointment with Senior Engineer Ar Tra," said the Prime Minister, though his voice quavered with disapproval. "I must say, Master Jedi, that I have every confidence in the abilities and integrity of my engineers."

Obi-Wan glanced at Su, sensing the Kaminoan's bristling pride and veiled irritation. "I mean no disrespect, Prime Minister," he said quietly, "but I must pursue any and all leads concerning the attempt on the Senator's life. Disquiet in the capital...you understand. The Chancellor and the Senate are under a great deal of pressure. It is the Order's responsibility to secure their wellbeing against _all_ possible threats." He sighed. "Personally, I think it more likely that an interloper somehow infiltrated the clone corps on Naboo, but you understand that we must and will follow all avenues of inquiry?" _Ah, the joy of appeasement._

Lama Su didn't look happy, but he nodded his gaunt head on the end of its long, graceful neck. "Very well, General Kenobi," he said, gesturing toward the halls below with a long-fingered hand. "The Senior Engineer awaits your convenience in his office in the Citadel of Progress and Genetic Perfection. I will arrange a guide."

"Thank you, Prime Minister," said Obi-Wan.

JANGO

Jango Fett sat alone in the living area of his apartment in Coruscant's Menarai District, home to some of the planet's wealthiest sentients. The room, despite its locale, was barren to the point of dereliction with only a flimsy fiberplast table and a pair of folding chairs for furnishing. Jango's armor and equipment were stacked neatly beside the door and his blasters lay side by side on the tabletop, freshly cleaned and maintenanced. The first apartment, Jango recalled as he stared at the quarter-size hologram of Dooku from across the room, had been a luxurious prince's penthouse. Places like that made a man soft, stole his edge and melted his reflexes. He'd filed for a new one after just one day. He didn't need Boba growing up in some dilettante's nest of luxury and excess.

"Our mutual benefactor has expressed some displeasure at your taking a personal hand in the operations on Naboo," said Dooku in his deep, powerful orator's voice. He looked tired, more so than usual. "He wishes to convey a general order to...maintain a low profile. Exposure at this stage in the game jeopardizes us all, Master Fett."

Jango crossed his legs and frowned. "Clones aren't good at doing things halfway," he grunted. "You want an assassination botched, you use a professional. Besides, the boys trust me. Must be my honest face." He grinned, the scars at the corner of his mouth stretching.

Dooku did not look amused. "They trust you, yes," he said, "but they are not entirely compliant. Not all of them, and several have formed well-publicized rapports with their Jedi commanders. The last thing we need is to have you, the face of the Republic's war effort, linked to a Confederate assassination attempt. You _will_ remain on Coruscant, Master Fett, and you will take no further role in any clone operations."

Jango said nothing for a long moment. He folded his arms across his chest. "No," he said at last. "Not me, Count. I like a quiet life."

"Consider your son's safety, bounty hunter," said the Count, and there was an angry bite to his tone that Jango didn't like one bit.

Jango stood and took a bottle of Bothan ale from the table. He pulled the cork out with his teeth and took a long swallow, and then he very deliberately spat on the floor. "Touch my son," he said to Dooku, jabbing a finger at the hologram. "Go on, do it. I dare you, Jedi. I damned well dare you to touch my boy."

"I am merely the messenger," Dooku said stiffly. "Your temper is wasted on me, Jango. I would advise caution."

The hologram vanished and Jango took another long pull of the dark, rich ale before slamming the bottle down onto the table. He closed his eyes. _Keep it together._

"Dad?"

Jango's eyes snapped open. He turned toward the hall to the bedroom. Boba was standing there in his nightshirt, an outsize old tunic of Jango's. The boy was tall for his age with Jango's olive skin, dark hair and hard eyes. Jango felt the usual surge of pride and fear clutch at his chest. "Go back to bed, Boba," he heard himself say.

"I heard voices," said the boy, scratching at his thick head of hair. He glanced toward the holoprojector/com unit rig standing by the shaded window.

"It's nothing," said Jango. "Back to bed. Now."

Boba went. He'd learned obedience young, just as Jango had. It sank in quick when the penalty for backtalk was a hand across the mouth. Jango dropped back into his chair at the table. Obedience wasn't all Boba had learned. He'd picked up piloting like a damned bird, had taken to the Mandalorian fighting forms with grit and determination. It was everything Jango could have expected from his sole unaltered clone. _From my son._

Now Sidious, through Dooku, had threatened Boba. It was an affront Jango would have to think on, before acting. Showing one's employer that one wouldn't be muscled around was a good idea, in the main, but Jango was a practical man. Sometimes you had to take a few to the gut to walk out of the bar alive. Dealing with the Sith was one of those damn times. Still, he could have the _Slave I_ warmed up in ten minutes, airborne inside the hour and through Coruscant's planetary shields in another. He and Boba could be halfway across the Galaxy before morning.

Was it worth the risk?

Jango Fett sat in the dark, thinking.

GRIEVOUS

Grievous returned to Geonosis just after the planet's second sun had set. His insectile shuttle set down outside Poggle's smoke-shrouded hive and the General disembarked onto the baked hardpan of the Geonosian desert. An escort of silent, red-eyed Magnaguards was there to greet him. He brushed past the silent droids without a word, his claws gouging deep furrows in the earth. The lightsabers he had taken on Hypori rattled against his armored sides as his cloak swirled around him in the dusty wind. He narrowed his glistening yellow eyes against the gale and set off toward the hive and its comforting darkness.

Archduke Poggle and the Count were in the war room with Passel Argente and Wat Tambor, the nearsighted Techno Union Foreman. Geonosian drones were swarming all over the data readouts and sensor stations, sifting through the influx of information that came of waging a Galaxy-wide war effort. "Count Dooku," rasped Grievous as he stalked into the room. He shot a contemptuous glance at Tambor and Argente, neither of whom returned his stare.

"Ah, General," said Dooku, looking up from the flickering holographic map hanging over the war room's hulking strategic table. "Hypori, it seems, was a deft thrust. The Council is reeling and the Order's image has been tarnished, perhaps irreparably. I was pleased with your performance."

"How have the Rim campaigns fared in my absence?" snarled Grievous, gripping the edge of the table in clawed hands and sweeping the holographic data on a dozen different systems. The pride he felt at Dooku's praise made him nauseous. He was a warrior of the Kaleesh, not Dooku's lapdog. A real man didn't need another's approval to take pride in the blood shed by his own hands. The muscles beneath his mask twitched. _My hands are not my own. I am not a man. I can sire no children. I cannot rise from my bed without this vile shell._

"Adequately," said the Count, waving a hand at a holographic representation of the planet Ando. "We have pushed the Republic back, though not so quickly as we expected. Your tactical insight, I'm afraid, was missed."

Grievous clicked his claws against the tactical table as Poggle trilled and warbled to the Count. Thinking about Palpatine's grand design, and better yet seeing it in action, always soothed his temperament. Soon the Galaxy would be cleansed of its greedy, spineless dregs and real strength would sit in Coruscant again. Soon the injustices heaped on Kalee by the accursed Jedi would be lifted and the Kaleesh raised to their rightful place of pride in the Galaxy with he, Qymaen jai Shaleel at their head. His eyes stung, tear ducts aching pointlessly.

"I've ordered the tenth and sixteenth fleets into position over Hypori, of course," said Dooku. "We'll be ready to strike at Coruscant just after Fete Day. The new campaign will be inaugurated with a ball open to all the member planets of the CIS. On the planet itself, I think."

"Entirely fitting, Count," rumbled Tambor in his flat, mechanical voice as he placed a hand self-importantly on his brocaded chest. "A grand gesture."

A thin smile twisted Dooku's mouth. "Indeed," he said.

Grievous shifting his gaze from Ando to the glittering jewel of Coruscant. Coruscant, seat of the Jedi Order. Home of the Jedi Temple. He coughed, his lungs straining in their nutrient solution. "Fete Day," he rasped.

"Appropriate," said Dooku. "Don't you think?"

"Entirely," snarled Grievous. "I will leave tomorrow with the tenth fleet."

Dooku looked at him. "Excellent, my friend," he said. "Very good."

OBI-WAN

Senior Engineer Ar Tra's office complex was near the base of the Citadel of Progress and Genetic Perfection, a sprawling edifice that housed the cloning facility's prototype cloning tanks and its sprawling, ever-occupied laboratories. A tall, slender Kaminoan female from the Prime Minister's personal staff led Obi-Wan briskly down the city's labyrinth of featureless white corridors, making polite conversation. The low-frequency hum of clone consciousnesses overlapping intruded on Obi-Wan's thoughts, distracting and unsettling. The resonance between thought patterns lessened after the clones left Kamino and entered the service of the Republic, but here in their sheltered crèche they were disturbingly alike in thought as well as in appearance. It was a strange sensation, like standing in a hall of mirrors with echoes bouncing off of every wall. Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan thought ruefully, would have been endlessly fascinated by it.

The aide kept up a steady stream of commentary on the city's cloning facilities, day-to-day life and layout as they passed down an empty access bridge linking two of the city's domes. Obi-Wan glanced to his left and saw the ocean raging beyond the thick plasteel windows. Spray rose sixty meters above the sea, as though the water were some furious beast set on devouring Tipoca City. He paused, frowning.

Something was wrong. A disturbance, illusive and slippery.

"...and here, of course, is the Atrium of Illuminated Being," continued the aide, "here our geneticists will often...Master Kenobi?" She had turned, halfway between Obi-Wan and the opposite end of the access bridge, a quizzical expression on her alien face.

Obi-Wan stared out to sea at the towering thunderheads on the horizon. Whatever it was, the sensation of wrongness had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving only a vague sense of foreboding in the air.

"Master Kenobi?"

The aide's apprehensive tone brought Obi-Wan back to the moment. He turned, clearing his throat. "My apologies," he said. "Lead on."

They passed through the Atrium of Illuminated Being, a soaring space decorated with reflecting pools and free-form Kaminoan glass sculptures. Small clumps of robed researchers strode here and there along the walkways between pools or sat together on long benches, deep in discussion with one another. A few clones walked here and there with their Kaminoan supervisors. Once through the Atrium they took a turbolift shaft down eight levels to the level holding the Senior Engineers' private offices.

They were halfway to Ar Tra's office at the east end of the hall when a sense of sick enjoyment rolled down the hall and swept through Obi-Wan's perceptions. He plunged his hand into his robes and drew his lightsaber, provoking a trill of alarm from the Prime Minister's aide. "Get down!" he shouted, probing the hallway with his senses as the Force eddied and swirled around him in its agitation.

And then the door to Tra's offices exploded outward into the hall, followed by an enormous cloud of smoke. And then by the Senior Engineer's limp, headless body. Alarm klaxons began to wail as Obi-Wan ignited his lightsaber and doors all along the hall flew open, heralding the arrival of dozens of aging Kaminoans in various states of disarray. Obi-Wan ignored their shouted questions. The murderer stepped into the hall on slippered feet a moment later, her skirts hissing over the white metal of Tipoca's floor. She stared at Obi-Wan through the smoke with pale, heartless eyes and smiled cruelly.

"General Kenobi," she murmured. "What a pleasure."

She moved fast, faster even than Maul had four years ago on Naboo. Obi-Wan barely got his lightsaber up in time to block the overhand blow from her two curved-hilted red blades. Her momentum carried her past in a bizarre half-cartwheel, skirts flaring around thin legs. She laughed, a mad and high-pitched shriek of mirth. Her pale eyes bulged in her pale, lifeless face, and as Obi-Wan raced after her she reversed her grip on her lefthand saber and drove it through the Prime Minister's aide's chest. The female Kaminoan crumpled, smoke rising from her robes.

"It's an honor to finally meet you," screamed the woman, twisting away from Obi-Wan's thrust and responding with a vicious scissoring slash that he barely managed to turn aside. "I've heard so _much_ about you. The _famous_ General Kenobi." She laughed again, staggering through her footwork as her sabers twirled and twisted around her in a deceptively sloppy defense.

Obi-Wan chopped at the bald woman's legs and she swayed back, grinning. "Put down your weapons and surrender," he snapped. "I'd rather not make a mess of things."

"Oh, General," she drawled, answering Obi-Wan's lightning-swift jab with a brutal backhand that just missed bisecting his jaw. "I wouldn't dream of inconveniencing _you._ " She came on in a rush of flashing red light, pressing Obi-Wan back down the corridor as the Kaminoans screamed and flailed around them, fighting one another in an attempt to crowd into the turbolift shaft. The woman's pale eyes narrowed to lazy slits. "You're here to see the Senior Engineer, I take it? A pity he's otherwise engaged.

"I'm afraid he quite lost his head when he realized it."

Obi-Wan fell silent and reached out for the Force, let it flow through him and direct his arms. His breathing evened out as his defense firmed, and then became a swift rush. The woman fell back before him, screaming insults he didn't hear over the roar and thunder of the Force. His feet flew through the forms of Soresu, clean and simple. His lightsaber cut patterns in the air and drove the assassin back, back down the hall.

A squad of armored clones burst from the emergency turbolift shaft just as Obi-Wan caught the assassin in a Force push that slammed her back against the wall. He summoned her lightsabers with a flick of his wrist, holding her fast against the white surface of the wall as he did. Her huge, pallid eyes stared at him in mute fury. Her flat chest heaved madly. Obi-Wan turned away as the clones leveled their blasters at the woman. "Fit her with a pair of stun cuffs and have her brought back to the Citadel of Governance and Clarity," he said, looking in disgust at the Prime Minister's murdered aide and then at Ar Tra. _A traitor, or an unwitting accomplice? And to what?_

"Yes sir, General," said the clone sergeant, saluting.

Obi-Wan glanced back at the bald woman as the clones cuffed her and turned up the current on the device until her eyes rolled back up into her head and she sagged, shuddering. Confederate, certainly. Sith, most likely. But was she part of the same cabal that Maul seemed to belong to? "I'll want to question her this evening," he heard himself say. "Take her away, soldier."

"Sir," the sergeant repeated, and he and his men dragged the woman away as the alarms continued to wail and the Senior Engineers struggled to compose themselves, talking over one another in a storm of undignified bluster. Obi-Wan ignored them as he knelt beside the dead Kaminoan woman and closed her eyes. The smoking hole in her chest called up painful memories. He touched her pale hand, then straightened just as Lama Su emerged from the same emergency turbolift the clones had arrived in.

"Master Kenobi!" gasped the Prime Minister, limping toward Obi-Wan with a swarm of functionaries in tow. He caught sight of his aide and staggered to a halt, clutching at the front of his robes. "Tuen? No...no, what reason..."

"I'm afraid there is no reason, Prime Minister," said Obi-Wan, fingering one of the assassin's still-warm sabers. He did not take his eyes from the Kaminoan woman's corpse. _Tuen._ "Your Senior Engineer's death, however, is another matter." He turned to the Prime Minister. "I'll have to ask you to detain the entire department for questioning."

Lama Su looked shocked and offended, but only for a moment. The girl's death had rattled him badly, that much was obvious. "Of course, Master Kenobi," he wheezed. "Of course."

Obi-Wan nodded in thanks and then strode away, toward the turbolift shaft, as the Senior Engineering staff closed in around Lama Su, clamoring for answers.


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR: DOUBT

ANAKIN

The Chancellor's expression was grim as he dismissed Mas Amedda and Senator Organa and turned back to Anakin. The conference room doors slid shut with a hiss. "Seven," the Chancellor said, his voice hollow with loss and anger. "Seven Senators of the Republic murdered in their homes." He ran a hand over his unshaven face, fingers tracing the deep lines strain and time had left in his profile. "I have begun to suspect, Anakin," he said quietly, "that I am being framed."

Anakin started up from his seat beside the small meeting room's only window. "Framed?" he asked incredulously. "That's a tall order, especially for the Confederacy. Anyone still thinking would realize Dooku is just trying to sow dissent."

"You are a student of your Master's rather...direct politics," said Palpatine with a tired smile. He put a hand on the conference table and his expression darkened. "But the arena of Galactic government is not a place known for its forthrightness in speech or action. One must think in hypotheticals, account for every possible permutation of events. In murdering _my_ political opponents Dooku creates the potential for a far greater outpouring of chaos than the murder of my allies might have created. In this way he appears to strengthen my position, to bring the Senate more securely under my personal direction, but in reality he creates an environment of fear and paranoia.

"Whether or not the Senators admit it, even to themselves, they will on some level suspect my involvement in tonight's unfortunate events. They will fear me, second-guess my motivations. Unity in the Senate will suffer for it, and the war effort..."

Anakin frowned. "If Dooku wants you isolated from your supporters, and if the Senate really is taken in by his move," he paused, rubbing at his chin, "it seems like your best move would be to use it against him. The War Powers act gives you the authority to move the war without Senatorial approval. If they don't trust you, you can just ignore them."

Palpatine chuckled. "Certainly a tempting proposition," he said. He glanced at Anakin, his smile fading. "But hardly an opinion the Order would endorse."

Anakin flashed a lopsided grin. "Master Yoda and I don't always see eye-to-eye in election season," he said, and shrugged. "The war effort needs strong leadership to succeed. It can't be bogged down under the Senate's bureaucracy. Sometimes I think the Council doesn't realize that."

"You have vision, Anakin," said Palpatine. He joined Anakin at the window and put a hand on the younger man's shoulder. "A rare quality in a Jedi, if I may be so bold as to state it. The talent of pragmatism, of observing and understanding the practical exigencies that drive our decisions, is an invaluable one. Only by anticipating those around you can you achieve true greatness."

"I don't want greatness, Chancellor," said Anakin. The words came quickly, memorized by rote in the echoing halls of the Jedi Temple. He fought the impulse to cringe at the memory of towering over the other padawans, children of eight and nine. A scowl twisted his mouth. "It's not the Jedi way." _There is no emotion. There is serenity._

"And yet I fear you may find it thrust upon you soon enough," said Palpatine with a kind smile. "You are, whether you like it or not, a Galactically famous man and an officer in the Grand Army. Soon, Anakin, you will take up the standard of the Galaxy's future."

"Not for a few more years, I hope," said Anakin.

Palpatine sighed. "We can only hope, in the end," he said. His comlink chimed and he answered it, his hand sliding from Anakin's shoulder. "Ah, yes. And the delegates from Malastare? Inform them that I'll be there within the hour." He turned to Anakin, the lines of weariness in his face more pronounced than ever. "I'm afraid I must attend to my unruly colleagues," he said. "I suggest you return to the Senator. Doubtlessly she has been shaken by the night's events."

"Of course, Chancellor," said Anakin, forcing a smile. _Padme..._

Palpatine left, joined in the hall by an escort of red-robed Senate Guards and a scurrying Mon Calamari aide with a datapad clutched in her webbed hands and a protocol droid in tow. Anakin stood in the doorway and watched the older man vanish around a bend in the hallway.

"You look troubled, Skywalker."

Anakin turned, eyebrows rising. Mace Windu stood just down the corridor, dressed in his brown tunic and long roughspun robes despite the early hour. "Master Windu," said Anakin, snapping to attention. "Just tired, sir."

"Understandable," said Mace. "At ease, Padawan. We're not on the parade ground." He clasped his hands behind his back. "I was just on my way to meet with Senator Toora. Walk with me."

"Of course, Master," said Anakin. He fell into step beside Windu as the older Jedi set off at a brisk pace down the hall in the direction Palpatine had gone.

"Do you know what the Jedi serve, Anakin?" asked Windu. He arched an eyebrow.

Anakin glanced at the older man. "Justice, Master," he said. "The people of the Galaxy-"

"Justice is the province of the courts," said Mace. "We do not arbitrate. Nor do we serve good, a point of view on the best of days.

"No, Anakin. What we serve is the Republic. We serve civilization. The Force is our ally in this, guiding our actions and helping us to secure the foundations of Galactic society. That we keep the peace is merely an extension of this greater duty."

"I'm not sure I understand," said Anakin. "Master, I should-"

"Senator Naberrie is meeting with Master Yoda," said Mace. "She'll be safe a while longer."

"Yes, Master."

Windu said nothing for a long while. They walked in silence along the corridor, Anakin trying to master his impatience as the minutes ticked onward. Windu's presence in the Force was serene and confident, unhurried by the grim events surrounding him. Anakin stayed silent and walked on past bureaucrats and Senators, aides and service droids. The corridors were growing louder as news of the murders spread like wildfire through the building.

At last they came to a quiet intersection where several Senators had their offices, now vacant in the clamor. Mace halted and Anakin came to a stop at his side, glancing at the empty offices. "It appears Senator Toora is elsewhere this morning," said Mace lightly. He turned to Anakin and his tone shifted, becoming more serious. "I sense confusion in you, Skywalker. The Living Force is disturbed in your wake. Your thoughts are divided.

"Don't let conflict cloud your judgment. Remember your training."

Anakin frowned. "Yes, Master," he said.

"Qui-Gon would be proud, you know," said Mace. "To see you wearing the braid, learning with Obi-Wan. He has such confidence in you, Anakin."

Anakin shifted uncomfortably. He saw again the scene as Obi-Wan had described it. The burning gunship, the broken street and Qui-Gon's body... He pushed the thoughts away. "Thank you, Master," he said quietly.

Mace smiled, and then he turned and walked away, humming to himself.

Anakin waited until the older man was out of sight, then he turned and set off at a quick jog for the Chancellor's office. He reached it just as Master Yoda was leaving. The diminutive Jedi greeted him cordially and Anakin bowed. "Master," he said.

"Jedi Skywalker," said Yoda as he hobbled past, leaning on his knobby cane. Anakin stood at attention until Yoda had gone, then he brushed past the red-garbed Senate Guards and went into the office. Padme was standing by the Chancellor's desk, her eyes staring through one of Palpatine's sculptures. She looked around at his entrance.

"Anakin," said the Senator, a smile flitting across her unpainted face. She looked different without the white facial cosmetics Naboo's politicians wore in public. Younger. Sadder.

"Senator," said Anakin. "The Chancellor sends his regards. He'll be back later in the morning. Until then I think it's best we stay here, under the protection of the Senate Guard."

Padme nodded, then turned back to her examination of the sculpture by the Chancellor's desk. There was a moment of silence between them and Anakin felt an unpleasant ache building in his chest. Three steps. Maul could have crossed the room in an instant, in three steps, and put an end to her, to her smile and the glossy waves of her hair and the blue fire behind her eyes. Standing in Palpatine's office he saw her end written by Maul's blood-crimson lightsaber slash, saw the _could-have-been_ of it flash before him.

"You know the Chancellor well, Anakin," said Padme, not turning. "How does he strike you?"

Anakin, halfway to the Chancellor's desk and engrossed in the view of early morning light and dark outside the window, glanced quickly at the Senator. The question was a probe. He could tell that much just by listening. But how to answer? Palpatine was so many things in his world. Father, confidante, mentor and friend. Ever since his induction into the Order it had been Palpatine, Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, who had taken a special interest in him, had made a point of speaking to him whenever he visited the Temple or Anakin found himself in the Senate Building. "I think he's what the Galaxy needs right now," he said at last. "Someone strong-committed to a single course of action."

"I felt the same way when he was elected," said Padme. "It's why I voted for him. He was so driven, so righteous." She turned to Anakin, a half-smile twisting her generous mouth. "Sometimes I feel like this war has taken the best out of all of us."

She turned back to the sculpture, but not before Anakin saw the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. He felt again the dull ache in his chest, the echo of whatever pain she felt. "Senator..." he said quietly. "I-"

"You remind me of Qui-Gon," said Padme in a strained voice. She was staring through the statue now, not really seeing it. She pressed two fingers to her furrowed brow, closing her eyes. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"It's all right," said Anakin, fighting confusion. "Don't worry about it, Senator."

She didn't look at him. Anakin turned back to the window and folded his arms, saying nothing. Leaving the Senator to her thoughts.

OBI-WAN

The bald woman knelt in the center of the room, her hands stuncuffed together behind her back. Her pale eyes scanned the walls with restless, impatient scrutiny. A pair of armored clones stood behind her, the barrels of their blaster rifles pressed against her skull. And yet, thought Obi-Wan as he studied the prisoner through the one-way plasteel of the interrogation cell, it was she who dictated events in that cramped and too-bright room. The clones at her back might as well have been cutouts. The stuncuffs on her wrists could have been spun from air. Arrogance rolled off of her in waves.

"Senior Engineer Ta appears to have kept dangerous company," said Obi-Wan to the Prime Minister. "I'll require a full record of his dealings and decisions inside Tipoca City, and of his involvement in the cloning program."

Lama Su shook his head wearily. "Everything will be placed at your disposal," he whispered in a hoarse, broken tone. "That this deception ran so deep... I am ashamed, General."

Four more bodies had been discovered in the Citadel of Progress and Genetic Perfection. An ancient Kaminoan, one of the former Senior Engineers. Two geneticists of no particular renown or consequence. A program coordinator. Traitors to the Republic? Members of some grand and overarching conspiracy, or false trails blazed to distract and dissemble? Obi-Wan rubbed at his bearded chin, considering. The Dark Side coated everything, as it had since the inception of the war. A Galaxy's worth of slaughter and blind hatred. The curtain of Sith machinations, more rumor than reality. _Maul,_ Mace Windu had said, _is a blunt instrument. Some hand is moving him._

This woman was not the hand.

"Thank you for your time, Prime Minister," said Obi-Wan, turning to Lama Su. "And for your cooperation. If you could see to the acquiring of the necessary records...?"

"At once, Master Kenobi," said Lama Su. He limped away, aides in tow, and left Obi-Wan alone with the Senior Detention Minister and a detachment of clone officers.

Obi-Wan turned to one of the officers, indistinguishable from all his blunt-featured brethren. "Open the door, commander," he said. "I'll speak with the detainee now."

"Sir," said the clone. He jabbed a button beside the narrow access door.

Obi-Wan stepped into the detention cell. The door slid smoothly shut behind him. The woman's pale, dead eyes moved and met his. She smiled a slow, poisonous reptilian smile. "Master Kenobi," she murmured. "Or is it General? It's so hard to tell these days, on account of the Jedi serving in the war." Her voice was a hollow drawl, her tone callous and accusatory. "So young and already on the Council. I wonder what the shriveled old wave of the past sees in you, Master Kenobi. General Kenobi. Jedi." Her thin lips peeled back from her crowded teeth.

Obi-Wan regarded her dispassionately. "Are you Sith?"

The woman stared up at him. "No," she said after a long pause. "I thought I was, but they showed me the truth of the matter. The Dark Side alone a Sith does not make."

She was being playful, almost coy. Her head was tilted to the side, her eyes half-lidded. Obi-Wan clasped his hands behind his back and adopted a parade rest stance, heels just apart. "Who taught you to use the Force?"

"Count Dooku," she purred, her smile widening. "You learn it between thrusts." Her torso twisted. Her lips curled back, exposing infected gums. " _Uh_ , there is no emotion, _uh,_ there is no ignorance, _UH,_ there is no death, _UH, UH, UH."_ She rolled her head in a grotesque parody of ecstasy, her back arching so that her small, flat breasts pressed against the fabric of her black singlesuit. She let herself flop over onto her side, staring up at Obi-Wan from the corner of one colorless eye. She licked her lips with a pointed tongue, the action slow and deliberate. "Mmm," she said.

"Your mission on Kamino?" Obi-Wan continued, glancing down at the prostrate woman.

"Murder," she said dryly. "Settling debts. I had others to get to, but you spoiled the fun." Again the lunatic smile gashed her face. "There just aren't enough hours in the day, General."

"The Jedi Council is prepared to offer amnesty in exchange for information-"

"The Jedi Council is prepared to offer me a padded cell and a nutrient tube," spat the woman, her face twisting in an instant into a mask of pure hatred. "Don't think you can fool me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Don't think you can lie to Asajj Ventress. _I can smell it."_

Obi-Wan made no response. Corruption and desperate insanity rolled off the woman at his feet like stench from a rotting corpse. She was utterly consumed by the Dark Side in its most petty and venal form. A shell for her greed and base emotions. He cleared his throat. "If you are unwilling to cooperate, interrogation procedures will be followed."

"I know what you are, Kenobi," mused the woman, her expression suddenly composed and icy. "You would follow procedure off the edge of a cliff."

"Then we have nothing further to discuss," said Obi-Wan, regret and pity coloring his voice. "I will arrange for your transport to a more secure facility." He turned and palmed the signal by the door. "Commander, we're through here."

Sensation flooded through him. He felt the deaths of the clones in the room beyond the interrogation cell. He felt the woman, Ventress, slip her stuncuffs and surge up off the floor in a viper's lightning-quick strike. His hand was closing on the hilt of his lightsaber when Ventress's fist caught him under the jaw and the back of his head cracked against the door. She was on him in an instant, wresting the lightsaber from his numb-finger grasp and driving a knee into his gut. Obi-Wan doubled over, coughing, and her elbow slammed into his back and drove him to his knees.

"There is no pain," said Ventress, rolling the words like a guttural groan in her mouth. "Is that all the fight the great Obi-Wan has in him?" Her pointed toes rocketed into his side and he went over, gasping for air. The door slid open at his back and he heard the muffled clank of command droid magnapeds on the spotless white floor. Cool lips brushed the skin behind his ear. Slim fingers slid under his jaw. "Men are so predictable," murmured Ventress.

The droids fitted him with stuncuffs and dragged him out of the cell, onto the killing floor. Clone bodies littered the small observation room. The Senior Detention Minister was standing by the door with Ventress, speaking in a low and hurried voice. "I have done everything that Lord Tyranus required of me," he hissed. "I believe my debt is _paid_ , Ventress."

Ventress didn't seem to hear him. She was engaged in examining her reclaimed lightsabers for signs of wear. The killing blow, when it came, was lightning-quick and merciless. The Kaminoan folded like a dead tree caught in a windstorm, bones popping like branches when it hit the floor. Asajj looked back to Obi-Wan, deactivating her saber as she did. "We have an appointment to keep, Master Jedi," she said, and then she turned and left, hips swaying from side to side.

There was an unmarked freighter on the landing pad beside Obi-Wan's fighter. Kaminoans and clones emerged to watch them, weapons raised and useless with Obi-Wan in the line of fire. They hesitated, barking orders. "Shoot," snapped Obi-Wan. "That's a direct command!"

They did not obey. The freighter lifted off. It left Kamino behind.

PADME

Palpatine entered his office at the head of a swarm of aides, promptly dismissed, crossed the room and sank into his chair with a sigh, the strain of another long night plain on his aging countenance. There were deep lines carved into his pale cheeks. Padme looked down at her cup of steaming caf, disturbed. The Chancellor had become the Republic's keystone, its supporting arch. For good or ill his charisma and integrity had become the crux of Galactic civilization. If he were to break down, or suffer some sort of illness... But even as worry slipped snakelike through Padme's thoughts the Chancellor straightened in his seat and folded his hands atop the dark wood of his desk. The worry remained, etched in the lines of his face, radiating from the corners of his mouth and the bridge of his long, thin nose but he was himself again, powerful and composed. "Senator," he said, "I'm afraid the situation has gone beyond a simple question of security.

"Whatever the Confederacy's motives they appear determined to...remove you." He stood and moved to the window where Anakin was standing, arms folded, and then turned back to Padme. "I feel compelled to recommend that you leave Coruscant, at least for the time being," he said. "Jedi Skywalker can protect you far more ably in a controlled environment, somewhere private and away from the main avenues of transit and trade. Perhaps Naboo?"

"Thank you for your concern, Chancellor," said Padme, setting down her porcelain cup. "My place is in the Senate." Even as she spoke she saw Maul's yellow eyes, his bared teeth and the crimson sweep of his lightsaber as it flashed within inches of Anakin's face.

"With all due respect, my lady," said Palpatine, "your corpse would be of precious little use to your fellow Senators."

Anakin turned to look out the window, his expression darkening. "I agree with the Chancellor," he said. "Naboo is out of the way. I can't guarantee your safety so long as you stay on Coruscant."

"Consider it a request from an old friend," said Palpatine, offering Padme a tired smile. "It would be a great personal relief to me, Senator."

Padme's gaze flicked between Anakin and Palpatine. They had discussed her situation in private. That much was obvious. But then, it wasn't uncommon to see the two together in a newscast or a holonet article. The Chancellor had taken the younger man under his wing just after Qui-Gon's death on Naboo; often he went out of his way to have Anakin present at strategic meetings and social events. It made for a good picture, the aging statesman and the handsome, fatherless Jedi, but Palpatine's investment in Skywalker seemed genuine. _So like Qui-Gon..._

Padme picked idly at the elaborate embroidery on the cuff of her dress. "Naboo," she said reluctantly, looking back to Palpatine. "I trust the matter will be investigated in my absence?"

"Master Plo Koon will handle the investigation personally," said Palpatine. "I've had assurances from the Council."

Padme nodded in silence. Anakin was still looking out over the lightening bustle of early morning in the heart of Coruscant's governmental district, his expression dark and brooding. Padme stood, picking up her still-steaming cup of caf. It occurred to her then how tall Skywalker was. Taller than he had been on Tatooine four years ago, and no longer a boy. And there was something about the way he stood beside the Chancellor, something oddly fitting. It was right that he was here, at the center of the Galaxy's affairs, his stance seemed to say.

It was only proper.

"Very well," said Padme at last. "For the time being, I will return to Naboo. Senator Organa can serve as my proxy in my absence." The words cost her bitterly.

"Thank you, my lady," said Palpatine, relief softening the lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. "It is a great weight off of my mind."

"We should depart immediately," said Anakin, moving away from the window. "The Council can secure us passage on a civilian transport. Something unobtrusive."

"I leave the details entirely in your hands, Jedi Skywalker," said Padme, forcing a vague smile.

"It's settled, then," said Palpatine, rubbing his hands together. "May the Force be with both of you, my friends."

Padme left Palpatine's office and moved past the red guards stationed outside the door without a second glance. To leave Coruscant at such a critical juncture... Something had changed, something deep and fundamental. And as Anakin escorted her to the Senate Docks and they met Captain Typho with a speeder to take them back to Five Hundred Republica Street, Padme Naberrie found that she no longer entirely trusted Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.

The ride back to her apartments was silent and tense. Anakin seemed lost in thought. She wondered what he and the Chancellor had discussed. She wondered what the boy from Tatooine had become in the four years since they had known each other.

She wondered if she would survive the war, or the month.

Their shuttle departed Coruscant just after Galactic Standard noon, clearing the planetary shields and jumping to hyperspace a bare hour later. She and Anakin sat with her personal R2 unit, the one that had repaired her cruiser's shield generator during their escape from Naboo, at a table in the ship's passenger lounge. Through the viewport she watched the light-webbed surface of the planet recede and then vanish as the stars stretched into lines of light.

His enemies were dying. Did he number her among them? His position had become ever more powerful, transcending the petty restrictions of term limits and Constitutional Law. And she had applauded and supported him at every turn, had held him up as the ensign of democracy and right conduct. Padme laced her hands together in her lap, troubled and angry.

Supposition. That was all it was. Palpatine carried the Republic on his shoulders...or in his pocket, depending on your point of view.

Anakin's low voice broke through her maudlin pondering. "You shouldn't worry," he said, inspecting the crowd of rundown travelers with practiced disinterest. "Naboo will be safe."

Padme's instinct was to shout that Naboo was never safe, that Naboo was where _he_ had died, but instead she held fast to nearly three decades of diplomatic polish and said blandly, "Thank you, Anakin. I'm sure you're right."


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE: THE LOST TWENTY

DOOKU

Count Dooku stepped down from the landing ramp of his solar sailer. A pair of super battle droids fell into step to his either side, their armored feet clanking on the pavement of the landing field outside the half-built skeleton of Confederate City on conquered Hypori. The Count walked swiftly over the scorching pavement, ignoring the holo droids that buzzed around him and the storm of journalists, petitioners and admirers that thronged around the electrobarrier surrounding the landing field. The flash of holo-recorders and the roar of the crowd had defined his life since his departure from the Order. His wealth alone would have been enough to catapult him into the topmost echelons of Galactic society, but to stand alone as the only living Jedi to have left the Order... Only nineteen others had preceded him in all the Order's long history. Publicly, at least.

A droid-piloted speeder met the Count at the edge of the field and conveyed him swiftly to the heart of Confederate City, the nearly-complete immensity of the Grand Palace of the Confederacy. The structure rose up above even the awe-inspiring towers and complexes that made up the city, above the monumental Wroshyr trees transplanted from Kashyyyk to grace the city's parks. It was a vast edifice, an ornate tower of basalt and durasteel soaring six hundred meters into the air before flaring out into a repulsor-supported dome decorated liberally with lines of inlaid electrum-plating. Dooku sat in the speeder's open rear compartment as it rose higher and higher on its approach, angling toward the majestic tower rising from the apex of the Grand Palace's dome.

The entire effect, thought Dooku, managed to bring to mind the Senate Building while asserting a nigh-oppressive feeling of immediate power. A pity the Galaxy would remain centered on Coruscant, filthy and crammed with the castoff slavering life forms of a million worlds. His mouth twisted downward in displeasure. He had argued against retaining the ancient seat of Galactic governance, but Palpatine's own opinions on the matter had been final. At least they agreed on the purification of the Senate. Man was the only race truly worthy of dominion.

The speeder alit lightly on a landing deck halfway up the command tower, nearly a mile from the planet's surface. Dooku stepped out of the vehicle, his cape snapping in the wind, and started toward the tower's airlock door. It opened a moment before he reached it, revealing Asajj. She wore her usual singlesuit, though with gold scrollwork around the high collar and running down the arms, and heavy skirts. Her arms were folded, her pale eyes cold and unblinking. "Kenobi awaits, Master," she said, bowing low.

Dooku swept past his apprentice and into the shadows of the Confederate Palace, wrapping himself in the Force as he did to still the hammer-stroke beating of his heart. It came easily, as it had since he entered Sidious's tutelage, a flood of power and sensation that swept away the aches and pains of age, the banalities of dull reality. He was not Dooku, rich and handsome, powerful and famous, loathed and adored. He was Darth Tyranus and his merest thought was the iron law around which the Galaxy revolved. He was the crux, the point of revolution. His steps echoed in the cavernous, half-finished halls of his palace. _His_ Palace, _his_ , not the power-grubbing Leadership Council's. His lip curled in disgust at the thought of so many aliens clustered together in the same room, of their vile stench and endless complaining. They had no integrity, no understanding of war or statecraft. Coin counters, all of them, and just as stupid and venal as Gunray had been. Haako was no better than his predecessor. The rest were worse.

And he, Dooku, would bring them all crashing down in flames-along with the Jedi.

Obi-Wan Kenobi waited in a secure repulsor cell, hanging between floor and ceiling with stuncuffs on his wrists and ankles. Dooku stared up at the young man, who looked back at him with cool, quiet confidence. "Master Kenobi," said the Count. He stepped smartly into the room, hands clasped behind his back. "I apologize for the method of your conveyance to Hypori. I feared you might refuse my invitation were it otherwise."

"A distinct possibility, Master Dooku," Kenobi said dryly.

"It's Count Dooku now," said Dooku, fighting to keep the cold anger from his tone. "The Order and I parted ways. A difference in philosophies. Perhaps you heard?"

"I don't follow the news," said Kenobi.

"This frivolity is pointless," said Dooku, irritated. "I brought you here to discuss your future, Master Kenobi." He waved a hand and the stuncuffs fell from Obi-Wan's wrists and ankles to clatter to the ground. Another flick of Dooku's wrist and the Jedi floated free of the repulsor field. He landed heavily on the polished floor, rubbing at his chafed wrists, and eyed the Count with suspicion.

"I do not intend to keep you a prisoner here," said Dooku to the younger man. "There are no guards outside the door, no security at the landing pad. Hear me out, Master Kenobi, and I assure you that if you still desire to leave, you will not be hindered."

"Talk, then," said Obi-Wan. His voice was calm and distant, that of the quintessential Jedi.

"I will be concise," said Dooku. "Qui-Gon was, in a very real sense, my son. Our vows rob us of the joys of fatherhood, but Master and Padawan can be closer even than father and son. I put a great deal of myself into your master, Obi-Wan, and in return I learned from him the ebb and flow of the Living Force. Comprehending it was perhaps his greatest gift.

"His death was caused, indirectly, by a Sith Lord the reach and cunning of whom you cannot imagine. In my investigations I have failed to uncover even the barest hint as to his identity, though his manipulations are evident at every level of Confederate and Republic government. His voice speaks in the Senate and on the Leadership Council through the unwitting and the corrupt. His associate, Maul, is better known to me."

The lines at the corners of Obi-Wan's eyes tightened at the sound of Maul's name. Dooku felt the younger man's heartbeat quicken, felt the strain of anger and old pain pressing against the iron bulwarks of Jedi discipline that circumscribed and subdivided Obi-Wan's mind. Dooku began to pace, one hand stroking his neat white-and-black beard while he held the other behind his back. "I sense hatred in you, Obi-Wan, a hatred I shared when I learned of the death of Qui-Gon. The death of my son. Imagine my feelings when the mysterious Sith Lord offered his apprentice's services in the war. Yes, Obi-Wan. Darth Maul entered my service some months ago. He comes and goes as his master dictates, else I would have dealt with him or given him up to the Republic. Now, however, I know very well where he will be on a certain date.

"In one week, Master Kenobi, he will be here, in this palace, on Fete Day eve."

Obi-Wan drew himself up. "Maul is of no particular interest to the war effort," he said stiffly. "His presence here on any given day is irrelevant."

"If you truly believed that you would have walked out the moment I opened my mouth," snapped Dooku. "I know what you feel, Obi-Wan. Maul ripped your master from you far before his time. You have burned for vengeance since the day you saw Qui-Gon's corpse on the ground at Maul's feet. Do you honestly expect me to believe that you have not dreamed of doing the deed? That you have not woken in a cold sweat to the memory of your lightsaber buried in Maul's chest? _He_ is the murderer, Obi-Wan. Vengeance is, in this instance, justice."

"No, Count," said Obi-Wan quietly. "I want no vengeance, only to serve the Order and the Republic. I am a Jedi Knight, not a soldier. I do not have the luxury of vendetta."

Dooku paused in his pacing and said nothing for a long moment. At last he clasped his hands together and spoke. "You are very like your master, Obi-Wan," he said. "Qui-Gon was a man of unimpeachable character. I envied him his composure, a gift in him I'm not sure the Jedi Council ever truly saw or understood. We remained close even after my departure from the Order, you know. He always spoke very highly of you, Obi-Wan, and I regret that we did not meet until his funeral. We might have been something like a family, I often thought. Three generations of the Order's finest and proudest sons.

"That time is past. Even in my old age I can see that much. You have chosen your path, and I mine. I had hoped, once, that you might join me. I think Qui-Gon would have, had he lived. He had such vision, Obi-Wan." A faint smile curved Dooku's mouth, then faded. "You were seized by Confederate agents, but you overpowered them on Cato Neimodia and captured their ship. Your lightsaber and the rest of your personal effects are waiting for you aboard a shuttle on the landing dock. Asajj is waiting outside. She will show you to the ship."

Obi-Wan made no response. There was a kind of quiet sadness in his face, a worn and honest integrity that reminded Dooku so forcefully of Qui-Gon that he nearly made to touch Obi-Wan's arm. Instead he turned away, hands behind his back, and forced down a wave of bitter disappointment as Obi-Wan's footsteps crossed the room and left by the open door. The man's conviction and serenity echoed through the Force like the rumor of a thunderstorm. He would never repeat the lies Dooku had given him except as evidence, but perhaps the truth would prove more obfuscating to the Republic in the long run. _They will wonder why I let him go, and they will wonder if the bond between master and apprentice continued through the generations..._ And perhaps they _would_ strike at Maul. It was a move Dooku had longed to make for years. It was a dream he had woken from often.

The seeds were planted. All that remained was to wait.

Alone in the darkness of the cell, Darth Tyranus smiled a private smile.

GRIEVOUS

Grievous watched from the bridge of the dreadnought _Invisible Hand_ as his fleet rained death down on Alderaan. It was not, he reflected, a warrior's battle. Alderaan was next to defenseless, its planetary shields too primitive to really protect its major population centers. Turbolaser fire stabbed down through the atmosphere, boiling air and blasting wounds into the planet's surface. Accuracy was immaterial. So long as the blasts occurred within sight of Alderaan's cities, the message would be conveyed. The bait would be swallowed. And yet still there was no sign of a counter-attack. Grievous drummed his Durasteel fingers against the arms of his specially reinforced command chair. The bombardment had been going on for hours, and still the Republic had not responded. Grievous knew they had fleets in the system. Surely they would not let Alderaan, breadbasket of the entire sector, fall without a shot fired in its defense?

"Captain," rasped Grievous to the tall, skeletally thin Neimoidian in long black robes standing behind the gunnery station.

The Neimoidian turned, his reptilian face unreadable. "Yes, General?"

"Prepare to leave the system and jump to Duro," said Grievous. "I will make the Republic pay for its negligence."

"Yes, General," said the Captain, whose name Grievous had never bothered to learn.

Grievous rose from his command chair and swept his cloak back, noting the terrified stares of his bridge crew. They had heard one too many rumors of murdered incompetents, communications officers smashed against their own instrument panels for dropping comm signals. Grievous flexed his hands and stared at a young Neimoidian gunnery crewman, just to watch the color drain from the alien's face. The crewman's hands shook as he turned back to his instrument panel.

"Cease the bombardment," said Grievous. "Lightspeed on my command, Captain."

"General," cried one of the communications officers, turning from his panel. "We're receiving a comm packet from the planet. It's a holo-recording, sir."

"Put it through," snarled Grievous.

The officer tapped out a command on his panel keyboard and two line-scribed blue figures snapped to life on the holoprojection disc below Grievous's command dais. The first was a tall, slender human woman in Jedi robes and a tentacle-like headdress. The other was a burly Talz, white-furred and beady-eyed. The woman spoke. "General Grievous, I am General Adi Gallia of the Galactic Republic. Come down to this planet and die."

She gave coordinates. General Grievous, who had been Qymaen jai Shaleel, boarded a shuttle over the protests of his officers, and went. He landed in a field of wind-whipped grass that grew up to his knees, his shuttle's landing jets scorching a broad swath of the field as it settled down. Columns of black smoke rose in the distance, markers of the turbolaser assault. The Jedi stood a hundred meters distant, lightsabers in their hands. The woman's blade was a pale rose, the Talz's a burning blue-white. Grievous stalked down the boarding ramp of his shuttle and into the long grass, his cloak flaring in the wind. He took two lightsabers from their holding loops. One had belonged to a man he had killed. The other was a gift from the Count, the relic of some long-ago Sith.

There was between the General and the Jedi what there is between any who prepare to kill or die. Silence, hard and brittle. The wind howled around them, sweeping flat the long golden grass. Alderaan's sky blazed with fire and sunset. Grievous moved first, launching himself at the two Jedi with lightsabers lit and raised. One burned red, the other green. He landed on one foot and spun, slashing to his either side at Jedi who were no longer there. The Talz attacked with predictable vigor, hammering at Grievous like a workman addressing a nail with his hammer. Grievous twisted and spun around the Jedi's clumsy blows, his own sabers flashing and flicking. His claws left deep gashes in the soft soil. His cloak swung in his wake.

Gallia was faster, and better. She wove a cage of red light with her saber, vaulting through the forms of Ataru with acrobatic grace. Grievous parried, swept a clawed foot at her head and ducked under her return slash even as he reversed his grip on the red saber and thrust it back through the knee of the onrushing Talz. The alien crashed to the ground, honking in agony. Grievous pivoted on one foot, battering Gallia's lunge aside. His other foot came down on hers, crushing it. She screamed, doubling over, and he drove his sabers through her chest. He laughed, the sound rasping at his ruined throat, and coughed as the body slid down into the long grass.

General Grievous silenced the shuddering Talz on his way back to the shuttle, smashing its skull with a Durasteel fist. The lightsabers of the two Jedi joined those already pocketed in his cloak, a heavy and comforting weight. He paused on the boarding ramp and looked back at the corpses in the grass. Another victory. Another slaughter. The Jedi ran from the mention of his name, the rumor of his coming. His ruined face twitched beneath his mask, and then a sound caught his attention. It was the shuttle's communicator.

He stabbed the device's call button and the Neimoidian captain's holographic image appeared above the projection plate as the shuttle lifted off, its autopilot charting a course back to the _Invisible Hand_. "Report, Captain," rasped Grievous.

"The _Scimitar_ has arrived in-system, General," said the Neimoidian. "Lord Maul is moving to board. Shall I grant him clearance?"

"Do you want to try to stop him, Captain?" snarled Grievous, thrusting his face closer to the hologram. The captain recoiled, flushing pink.

"I-I'll order the bay opened," stammered the Neimoidian.

Grievous slammed his fist down on the communicator, smashing it in a cloud of smoke and sparks. Snarling, he turned to the viewport. Flames licked the shuttle's hull as it rocketed up through the planet's atmosphere, thrusters burning. The approach to the _Invisible Hand_ was short and soon Grievous's shuttle set down in the hangar bay, shadowed by racks filled with _vulture_ -class fighter droids. The _Scimitar_ was resting on the deck sixty meters away, long and sleek and dark. Maul, Grievous noted, scanning the bay with narrowed eyes, was nowhere in sight.

"General."

Grievous turned. Maul was standing a short distance from the landing ramp, his burned face glaringly hideous under the harsh bay lights. "Lord Maul," snarled Grievous. "How...unexpected."

The Sith stared back with unreadable yellow-orange eyes, the tattoos that covered his face shifting as the muscles in his jaw flexed. "You are returning to Hypori," he asked, his voice as always surprisingly soft and cool. "I will accompany you."

Grievous clasped his armored hands together. "Of course, Lord Maul," he rasped, not bothering to conceal his displeasure. "We have a...stopover to make, at Duro, but then we will indeed return to Hypori for Count Dooku's Fete Day celebration.

"Appearances should be preserved."

"Yes," said Maul. And that was all. He turned and walked away, pulling up the hood of his heavy black cloak. No word on why he'd come, or on what he had been doing so far from Confederate Space. Grievous watched the Sith depart, then crossed the deck in a clattering rush and took a turbolift back to the bridge.

"Jump to lightspeed!" he roared, throwing the lift door open with such force that it bent nearly in half. "Bring us in to Duro, NOW!"

"Lightspeed!" cried the captain in a strangled voice, gripping the shoulder of the officer nearest his post.

The stars outside the viewports blurred, stretched and became lines. The _Invisible Hand_ shot through the cold void of space toward Duro.

ANAKIN

Their transport landed in Theed. It was strange to arrive somewhere and not be met by a welcoming committee, strange to disembark from a ship surrounded by travelers, merchants, the poor and the unwashed. Anakin stepped down off the boarding ramp and glanced around with interest at the Ticketmaster's station, the port authority and the security guards moving through the crowd at random. He hadn't been to Naboo since the start of the war, since that day aboard Tagge's ship. Theed had grown grimmer since the start of the war, but the ivy-wrapped buildings with their decorative domes and soaring minarets were still as grand as ever. The city's security wore personal deflectors now, and carried heavy Blastech D-19 blaster rifles.

Padmé moved to stand beside Anakin and slipped her arm through his. He shot a sidelong glance at her. Even in coarse brown robes she looked every inch the diplomat, dignified and beautiful. Her skin was warm and soft where her hand rested on his. _It's part of the cover,_ he reminded himself, gritting his teeth. "So, Senator," he said as they maneuvered past a knot of conversing Ithorians, "where's your man? We shouldn't stay here long."

"Captain Olié shouldn't be far," said Padmé. She slipped her arm out from Anakin's as they reached the arcade-lined plaza at the edge of the crowd, then led him up the stairs to a less crowded walkway where a tall, balding man in a long beige coat and heavy boots was waiting. Ric Olié hadn't changed much in the years since Anakin had last seen him. A little grey, a little more wrinkled, but still with an easy grin and bright eyes.

"Skywalker?" asked Olié, straightening up and scratching at his head. One bushy brow rose. "That really you?"

"Last time I checked," said Anakin, shaking the older man's hand. "It's good to see you, Ric."

Olié grinned and turned to Padmé. "M'lady," he said, sweeping off his soft cap. "The whole damn planet's been up in arms since we had news of the attack. The Queen wanted you back here the second it happened."

Padmé's expression went...flat, somehow. It was a look Anakin recognized from politicians caught on holovid, and he hated seeing it on the Senator. It was wrong, somehow.

"Queen Jamila contacted me, yes," she said calmly, folding her arms. "We agreed it would be to both our benefit if I remained on Coruscant while the War Powers voting continues."

"Well, no harm done I'm sure," said Ric, looking slightly putt off. "The Chancellor's popular enough to get his motions passed on his own."

Anakin sensed a sudden wave of unease and conflict from the Senator, but her expression remained fixed. "I'm certain you're right," she said to Olié, and her mask slipped to let through a genuine smile. "I hate to impose, Captain, but our schedule is tight..."

"Right, right," said Olié. He took Padmé's arm, winked at Anakin and set off down the arcade at a brisk walk. "Speeder's a street over at the private berths," he said to Padmé. "We're clear to leave the city and head for your father's lake house, soon as you'd like. The Queen hoped you might have time for a sit-down, but..."

"No," said Padmé. "No, I think discretion is the more...prudent choice." Her lips twitched.

Anakin fell into step beside the Senator and the pilot, sweeping the sparse crowds with the techniques he had gleaned in his years at the Academy. Anxiety, anger, lust, hope, longing and frustration rolled off of their busy minds in deafening waves, but it was a far cry from the constant din and furor of Coruscant. Here he could hear the Living Force as Qui-Gon had described it, vital and close and pure. Here, it seemed, he could almost understand it.  
The speeder was a sleek blue-and-gold model, Sorosuub engineering. A valet in Royal Navy colors waited to help Padmé into the speeder. Anakin climbed into the backseat as Olié chatted with the Senator about the weather as he ran through the expensive vehicle's preflight sequence, flipping switches and priming systems with offhanded expertise. "...and of course there's been another kick to the Royal Guard's budget," he said. "Captain-Admiral, excuse me, Panaka had it rammed down the Queen's throat. Said she needed to learn from Amidala's mistakes. Can't say I blame him, hard bastard like that spends his whole life shouting that the droids are at the gates until, one day, they are.

"And there isn't a damn thing he can do about it. Not that I mean any disrespect, ma'am. Last thing I want is Naboo in another damn war. Damn clones everywhere."

"These are difficult times," said Padmé quietly, examining her hands. "I'm sure the Admiral did what he thought was best."

"Mm," said Olié. "That's Panaka."

The speeder's repulsors hummed to life and they lifted off, swinging around a gilded onion dome and past a pair of half-rebuilt towers to join the sporadic traffic circulating over the city. Beyond the walls Anakin could make out the mist-shrouded countryside, just clearing in the early afternoon sunlight, and past that the swamps to the west and south where the native Gungans hunkered alone in their underwater cities, still struggling to recover in the wake of the quiet genocide the Federation's droids had carried out against them in the first days of the occupation. But even with all the dark memories, even under the shroud of the war, Naboo was beautiful.


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX: THE LAKE

PADME

The lake house sat on a gentle hill, its supports sunk deep into the dark, cool water of Varykino. Padmé stepped down from the speeder and onto the landing pad at the base of the hill, a faint smile curving her lips. It had been such a long time, and the air was clear at Varykino. She folded her arms as the speeder's engines powered down. Anakin and Olié joined her a moment later, carrying the luggage between them.

"Not bad," said Anakin, glancing appraisingly at the villa on the hill. "For a Senator, anyway."

Padmé laughed. It felt good. Layers of fear and tension born on Coruscant in the furor of the Senate Round seemed to melt away in the warm, clean air. "My family bought it from a poet," she said, waving a hand at the grandiose columns and soaring domes of her childhood summer home. "He was an awful writer, but he had good taste."

"Well," said Anakin, arching an eyebrow, "as long as he had taste."

They climbed the steps up the hill to the outlying verandas of Varykino, a series of terraces built into the hillside and decorated with lush gardens and abstract statuary. Padmé let the two men move ahead of her. She hung back, losing herself in the floating world of Varykino's gardens. Her slippers seemed to float over the dirt-brushed marble. The hem of her long brown dress cut a path through the fallen leaves. Ahead, Anakin and Olié joked and complained as they hauled hers and Anakin's luggage up to the open arcades of the lake house. Padmé picked up her pace. The air reminded her of him, serene and distant.

Inside, Varykino was a study in dark stone and soft lightning. The house, now empty, had been recently cleaned and swept and the guest rooms aired out. Bread, fruit, fresh fish and wine waited on the long boma-wood table in the dining room. Padmé moved through the ornately-furnished rooms, a faint smile curving her lips. Varykino had been a frequent summer retreat during her childhood. It smelled of dark water and sun-baked stone. Cool and slow and soothing.

"It's damned good to have you back, Senator," came Olié's rough voice. He had moved into the room and stood beside a column, hands in the pockets of his long tan coat.

Padmé turned. "Thank you, Captain," she said, her smile fading. "It has been a pleasure."

Olié jammed his cap on his head, sketched a rough bow and left. Padmé watched from one of the dining room's tall, narrow windows as the Captain's tall shape jogged down the steps in the hillside toward his waiting speeder. The whine of engines coming to life broke the serenity of the lakeside for a moment as Olié's vehicle rose up into the air, and then the speeder shot out over the lake and dwindled quickly into the placid sky.

Anakin moved into the room with practiced silence, his boots barely scuffing the polished marble floor. Padmé turned at his approach. "Anakin," she said. "Thank you-"

"A lake house?" he said flatly. "Your _family's_ lake house, Senator, this is hardly what I'd call secure. Any assassin worth his blaster could track you here."

Padmé bristled. "I think our arrival was sufficiently clandestine," she said. "The lake country is secluded, removed from the Galactic main. It will be perfectly adequate, Jedi Skywalker."

"That might have something to do with why the Republic asked the Jedi to fight its war," said Anakin, raising an eyebrow, "and not the Senate."

Padmé flushed. "That," she said, "is hardly relevant. The Chancellor's enemies have what they want: Palpatine threatened with scandal. They don't need to kill me to sell the public on gossip."

"You don't think he did it himself, then?" asked Anakin. The Padawan's expression was a mask, his tone carefully neutral. He moved to stand beside Padmé at the window.

 _He's testing me,_ she thought. The realization unsettled her. Skywalker had been canny living in poverty on Tatooine, and life in the Jedi Order had done nothing to dull his wits. But it wasn't just the Order lurking behind the too-innocent little-boy question. No, there was too much of the practiced grifter in it. Palpatine, charming and ironic with his bushy eyebrows and fatherly smile. Palpatine, who kept Skywalker close whenever the Galactic press came sniffing around the Senate.

"No," said Padmé at last. "I've known the Chancellor for years, Anakin. He would never order an assassination, and if he did he'd know not to kill his enemies.

"It makes a politician look stupid."

Anakin's expression remained stony. "That was my thought, as well," he said.

Padmé turned from the window. "I'll be in my apartments," she said. "Will you join me for dinner tonight, Anakin?"

The lines at the corners of the younger man's mouth relaxed. "Yes," he said. "Thank you, Senator."

Padmé left him standing at the window. She paused at the base of the broad stone stair leading up to the villa's second floor and looked back. Anakin stood washed in dim light on the cold stone floor, a spike of austere black in his Jedi robes. He made not a sound, not a single motion. Padmé could feel the air around him moving, though, like a storm waiting for its moment.

She went up the stairs and left Anakin Skywalker to stand at his window.

GRIEVOUS

Duro. It hung suspended in the void, a sickly greenish sphere ringed by endless satellites and orbiting facilities. Duro. Lifeline, to all outward appearances, of the Republic's ship-building effort. Duro. A carefully calculated lie in the Confederacy's campaign to lose its war.

Duro. Unfortunate object of General Grievous's rotten temper.

"Launch the bombers!" roared the General, slashing the air with a metal hand. Thin strings of spittle dripped from the filters beneath his vocabulator.

"Launch all bomber wings," the Captain repeated crisply from his place at the foot of Grievous's command dais. He looked up at Grievous, his eyes hidden by the blank gunmetal-colored data goggles that kept him joined to the flow of data throughout the _Invisible Hand._ "Your commands for the rest of the fleet, General?"

Grievous drummed his fingers against the arms of his command chair. "Spread out and prepare to engage the enemy," he snarled. "There _is_ a Republic fleet in-system. You can count on it."

The Captain, Mar Tuuk, Grievous thought he recalled, relayed his orders to the bridges of the fleet's six dreadnoughts and eight _Providence_ -class carrier/destroyers. Grievous keyed the left arm of his chair for holographic readouts and orange light flickered around him, creating a simplified overview of the void around Duro and the disposition of the Confederate fleet. Duro's moons hung large and ragged in the holo, wounded by a thousand years of rampant mining. The General's muscles twitched behind his mask in something like a smile. "Send a message to the _Invincible,_ Captain," he grated. "Tell Captain Trench to prepare to fire at coordinates twelve, sixty-four, eight hundred on my mark. And have the bombers swing wide and go in poleward, toward the south."

Mar Tuuk's readout goggles flickered and flashed. "Aye, General," he said.

The Neimoidian relayed the orders.

Grievous stared at the hologram, waiting in the hushed silence of the _Hand_ 's bridge. He knew the Republic could not hold off much longer. They would have to salve their consciousnesses.

"Captain Trench," said Grievous, tapping the com-relay on the arm of his seat.

 _General Grievous,_ came the Harch's clicking rattle of a voice. _I await your command._

"Open fire," said Grievous.

Trench was, in his own right, a brilliant commander. He possessed also the singular virtue of compliance with authority, so long as he respected its source. His respect for Grievous dictated that he wasted no time in ordering the _Invincible_ and her escort cruisers to open fire with all starboard batteries just as four _Venator_ -class Star Destroyers emerged from the mass shadow of Duro's second moon. Lances of hard light streaked across the void to splash against shields and boil Durasteel plating. Torpedoes left trails of crystallized gas in their wake, then burst in silent detonations against the oncoming Republic fleet. General Grievous looked on in silence as the two fleets closed and exchanged broadsides. The degree of detail involved in the Sith plan was impressive. Every world plagued by disloyalty to the Chancellor, by poor poling numbers or lackluster enthusiasm for the war effort, found itself punished by the Confederate hammer. It was as though Dooku and Sidious wielded whole planets as weapons, reducing to dust any world that stood in the way of their vision. Liars and illusionists, but great men.

The second element of the Republic counteroffensive appeared just where Grievous had predicted, missing the incoming bombers by half the planet's girth and instead planting themselves firmly between Duro and the guns of the main Confederate battle group. Each turbolaser strike read like poetry. Each proton torpedo and concussion missile was a jot of violent punctuation on the page of the battle over Duro. The General rose from his seat, cloak sweeping over the floor, and strode to the end of the command promenade directly beneath the forward viewscreen. Here, in the cold void, he could forget the fluids running through his false veins, the tension cables and hydraulics that had replaced his muscles. He could forget the vocabulator that choked his throat and the computer chips woven through his brain. He could forget Ronderu's corpse sprawled on the temple steps, trampled and despoiled by the Huk invaders.

Here, he was a warrior again and his sword slashed stars and cut the throats of whole worlds. Here he dueled the void and cowed it, made it scream and whimper. Here, for an instant, he was whole again. Qymaen jai Shaleel, disciple of the gods of sand and blood.

"Crush them!" he shouted, his hands creaking as they balled into fists.

The stars resounded as bombs and dead ships fell to Duro's blasted surface.

OBI-WAN

Obi-Wan stepped out onto the landing pad in the fading light of dusk, ignoring the timed and measured tramp of durasteel feet to his either side. A Neimoidian shuttle waited on its insectile landing legs, exhaust rumbling through the air around it as its engines came to life. Beyond the squat, buglike ship a half-built cityscape covered the waving grasslands of Hypori. Towers loomed in skeletal splendor above broad avenues occupied by columns of marching battle droids and Confederate soldiery. Vulture droid starfighters clung like carrion birds to every building in the city or cruised in silence high above the streets where parties of wealthy elite from the Separatist worlds cheered on the mechanical parades. Obi-Wan could see Aqualish, Gossam, Skakoans, even a handful of masked and hooded Kaleesh.

"You'll want this, Jedi," came Ventress's cold, drawling voice.

Obi-Wan turned. Ventress stood beside the archway leading back into the building, her skirts fluttering in the wind. She had his lightsaber in one slim, pale hand. He held out his own hand. She stepped forward and pressed the hilt into his palm, her fingers closing around it. Her colorless eyes held his for a long, queer moment and then she turned and stalked back into the tower. The archway cycled shut behind her. Obi-Wan stood, staring at the featureless durasteel blast door. The battle droids escorting him made no motion to hurry him on his way. They just stood in honor guard formation, a line of blued metal and raised blasters leading from the doors to the shuttle's waiting ramp. Obi-Wan clipped his unlit saber to his belt and, turning, strode with purpose for the shuttle. The craft was neat and sleek inside, its control surfaces clearly stamped with instructions in Arabesh. The Trade Federation, or what was left of it after Palpatine's executive seizure of their assets, had possessed the sole virtue of an appreciation for order. Obi-Wan sat down in the pilot's chair and ran through the preflight checklist.

It was blessedly simple. The shuttle rose on its repulsors, its landing ramp sliding neatly into its armored underbelly. Obi-Wan turned the piloting yoke and the ship curved up and to port, skirting the bulk of the great tower at the city's center. _Like the Senate Round,_ thought Obi-Wan as he rose toward the stratosphere and the promise of a swift jump to hyperspace, of a consultation with the Jedi Council. _With the rest of the Council,_ he corrected himself ruefully. There had to be something that made all the pieces of the puzzle-cube fit together. Something to unravel the lies of Kamino, to shed light on the shadow of the Sith. As the planet's atmosphere slipped away Obi-Wan allowed himself to sink into a half-trance, noting the disposition of the battleships over Hypori and the lines of interstellar traffic moving around the planet.

An inhuman voice crackled over the shuttle's comm. "You are clear to depart."

Obi-Wan pulled back the hyperdrive motivator, keyed for a jump to Coruscant and locked in the actuators. The stars bled away. The Galaxy became a maze of light and sensation. And then reality restored itself...and something fell away. Obi-Wan sat in the pilot's chair, alone in the Force for the first time since his trip to Kamino. It was as it had been for years, murky and diffuse where once it had been clean and fluid. Its deepest meaning, Qui-Gon's beloved Living Force, was further from its surface than it had ever been during Obi-Wan's apprenticeship. More and more he struggled to feel the rightness of the paths he chose to walk. More and more he lost himself in the meditations that had once been so simple and natural.

And so Obi-Wan drifted through the boundless sea of the Force, and he did not see. And he did not hear. And he did not love.

_There is no passion. There is no death._

The Sith were moving. Obi-Wan could sense their oily corruption slithering over the surface of the Force, could feel their machinations rattling in the shadows. Something was building to a fever pitch, something vast and black and star-devouring. Qui-Gon's death, the schism in the Republic, Dooku's defection from the Order, the blockade of Naboo and Gunray's fatal plunge from the balcony of Naboo's Royal Palace. Legions of clones on the march, the whine of blaster fire and the roar of ion engines churning space. A lightsaber flashing in the dark, and then another. Bared teeth and narrowed eyes. Fire scalding flesh.

Obi-Wan's eyes snapped open. "Anakin," he heard himself say.

Shaking his head, Obi-Wan stood and let the Force fall away. There was a sonic shower in the shuttle's refresher, and for a half hour he stood naked under the high-pressure waves of water and sound. When he felt clean he stepped out of the refresher stall and dressed himself in his unwashed clothes. The hyperspace comm had been rendered inactive, and lacking options he simply returned to the ship's main hold and sat cross-legged on the cold metal floor.

There was nothing to do but wait, and think.

ANAKIN

Anakin walked the airy halls and pillared arcades of Varykino. The sky outside was vaulted with a sea of stars and Naboo's moon hung bright and heavy in the void. He had been wrong about Coruscant being difficult for his meditations. The city-planet had not interfered with his concentration; it had masked the real power of the Force. His expeditions off-planet had, until now, been strictly in the company of clones and other Jedi: on Naboo he was alone with the Senator, cut off for the first time in years from the rumble and roar of a tide of sentient life.

It was pure madness.

He didn't hear the gentle pulse of Naboo, the rhythm of her fields and the clatter of her cities. He heard _everything._ All of it. The Galaxy screamed, and Anakin Skywalker stalked along dark corridors and ground his teeth as its wails thundered in his ears. His control was slipping. The walls Obi-Wan had taught him to raise were crumbling swiftly, overwhelmed by the radiant tide of the Living Force. Everything Qui-Gon had loved, everything Qui-Gon had hoped for. The whole of the Force channeled through a single living vessel, its will made manifest and heard by mortal ears. But there was no will, no voice, no clarity. Only the idiot howling of a vast and uncontrollable beast. It was in pain, contaminated and sick. Utterly insane.

Anakin paused on a landing somewhere. He had lost track of his surroundings again, and even pinching the bridge of his nose until blood vessels broke did little to restore his concentration. Moonlight spilled onto the cold, flat stones of the landing. Anakin looked out the window, over the smooth surface of the lake on which Varykino was built. He saw dumb wrath and the death of stars. He saw the xenophobic rituals of the Gungans in their cities beneath the lakes and marshes, the ritual execution of human and clone interlopers. He saw beasts moving in the jungles. He saw beyond the planet's frail atmosphere, out into the void where the Republic One-Hundred and Seventy-First Fleet hung in orbit and the moon shone.

And beyond that, to a world of sand and wind only a handful of light-years away. To an aging woman sitting in the dark, tears pouring down her weathered cheeks and onto her hands. Her cracked, her knotted, her bleeding hands. Screams in the dark. Faces wrapped in cloth, eyes hidden behind dark lenses. Anakin walked the halls of Varykino, wrapped in silence. He had endured the dreams before, had battered them down beneath layers of discipline and anger and self-denial until the darkness crawling behind his eyes was a distant memory of fear. Now it moved, a fanged whisper slithering in the long, dark tunnels of Anakin's waking mind. His senses struggled to pierce the shroud, to do what he had been called upon to do. To do what Obi-Wan would expect.

_Mother._

No other mind walked near Varykino, but Anakin poured his senses into the surrounding country until he could feel the ebb and flow of the lake in his veins, until he could feel the air moving through his skin. Too much. Too loud. He felt Padmé's mind pacing in slow circles in her room at the top of the villa. She, alone, was quiet and collected. A still lake of measured thought, deep and secret and sensual. Anakin tore his mind from Padme's sense and swept onward, his cloak billowing in the hot breeze rolling off the lake. He withdrew his senses from Varykino, closed himself off from the pulse and the thunder of life around the lake.

Stillness. Anakin staggered and his shoulder clipped a windowsill. He caught himself and hung there, knees shaking, forehead pressed to the cool stone of the sill. His breath rasped harshly in his chest as he levered himself upright. His fingers scraped the sill and fell limply to his side before balling into a fist. His lips twitched over gritted teeth. "Damn it," he rasped in the silence. "Damn it."

Anakin set off at a stalking half-run, just ahead of his dreams. He moved with hollow urgency along the halls and stairways of Varykino, in the light of the moon reflected off of the lake. The breeze made him shiver, cutting through his robes despite its mildness. He returned to the ground floor, allowed himself another moment of immersion in the Force and, detecting nothing, went into the empty dining room. He removed his robe and hung it from a chair. The Force moved around him.

He drew his lightsaber. His feet moved, adopting the first form of Shien. The blade snapped to life, a meter-long bar of blue-white plasma. Harsh shadows danced across the marble walls, and Anakin flung himself into the grueling routine he had developed during the siege of Ryloth. His saber crackled and hissed as it slashed the humid air. His feet flew over the cold floor, and in the clean lines and vicious simplicity of Shien he found himself again.

For a minute.

For an hour.

At last, breathless and sweating, Anakin spun to a halt and deactivated his lightsaber. Awareness returned. He wiped sweat from his brow and took his robe from the back of the chair at the dining room table. Turning, he saw Padmé standing in the doorway.

"Senator," said Anakin, too bone-tired to feel embarrassment. "I hope I didn't wake you."

"No," said Padmé, smiling faintly. She wore a trailing white dressing gown and her hair was loose, hanging down around her smooth shoulders. "I couldn't sleep." She moved to the table and took a slice of boma fruit from one of the silver dishes left over from their dinner. "Your form is good, as far as I know."

"No," said Anakin, shaking his head ruefully. "Master Windu and Master Obi-Wan lead the order in that regard. There are a hundred Jedi better with the saber than I am."

Padmé shrugged. "The Senate doesn't see much of the Order," she said. She popped the piece of boma into her mouth and chewed. "I hope that explains my ignorance, Jedi Skywalker."

"Anakin," he said. "Please."

Padmé folded her arms. "Anakin," she said after a long pause. She took another piece of fruit from the dish. "I saw Qui-Gon Jinn fight Darth Maul, on Tatooine. You remember." She didn't meet his eyes. "He looked like you did, just now. Serene. Centered."

The sadness in her was hidden deep, layered over with guilt and denial and bitter self-recrimination. Anakin put on his robes in silence and pushed away the jealousy that threatened to wash through him. "Qui-Gon was twice the swordsman I am," he said quietly.

"You don't give yourself enough credit, Anakin," said Padmé. "He would have been proud of you. He wanted so badly to see you trained."

"Thank you, Senator," said Anakin. _She loved him._

Padmé left the table and moved toward the pillars that flanked one of the room's stairways. Her dressing gown hissed over the marble as her hips swayed from side to side. At the base of the stair she turned, pulling her shawl close. "Goodnight...Anakin," she said.

"Goodnight, Senator," said Anakin.

She left.

He shrugged out of his robes and flew into the forms of Shien, vaulting and spinning. His lightsaber boiled the air and he knew a semblance of peace.

JANGO

Jango Fett was several things. He was a man of his word, an opportunist and a merciless bastard. Jaster, the man who had brought him into the Mandalorian tradition on the harsh world of Concord Dawn, had beaten these qualities into his last and greatest pupil. Jango could recite the four-hundred and seventy-six poems of Mandalore the Preserver from memory, list without effort the payload of a _Basilisk-_ class war droid, kill a man with his hands in any of ninety-odd ways, and shoot a charging rancor through the nasal cavity at any distance short of the horizon.

All of these things made Jango Fett a dangerous man, but what made him deadly was that of all the wealth and power to which he had access, of all the riches he had accrued in his lifetime as a bounty hunter, he cared for one thing and one thing only. His nine-year-old son.

The balcony of Jango's apartment afforded a spectacular view of Coruscant's Menari mountains. The bounty hunter admired them as he drank his unsweetened caf from a battered tin cup. It was one of a handful of things he had carried with him from Concord Dawn, after Jaster's death. He watched the speeders flash past in their airlanes, watched Coruscant go about its labyrinthine business in the light-dark of its nighttime. His caf was getting cold.

 _Sidious,_ thought Jango as he set his cup down on the railing, _is a dangerous man._ Involvement in the Sith Lord's scheme felt more like a fatal error every day, no matter how many credits it had secured. No matter that it had brought him Boba. No, nothing was worth the anxiety he felt when he stood beside Palpatine at the interminable press conferences, his famous face on display and Boba standing there beside him. At any moment, Sidious could take everything away. He knew Jango, as nobody had since Jaster's death, and it had been Jango himself who had allowed that to happen. Sixteen months on a base built flush against the side of an asteroid in the Dagobah system. Sixteen months in the stinking, badly-filtered air. In the dark. With the Sith.

Their hands moving in his mind, sifting through memories and thoughts. Putting things in place, they said. Just a few responses, insurance against some future event.

Jango finished his caf and went inside.


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE TEMPLE

ASAJJ

Asajj stepped down off of the shuttle's landing ramp and onto the sandy canyon floor. The Tuskens were waiting for her, a score of them with a pair of their huge horned banthas. The creatures lowed in agitation and the larger of the two swung its great head, matted hair sweeping the sand, but its rider stroked its thick neck and murmured a command. The beast fell still, its black eyes fixed on Asajj. She smiled thinly as the sun beat down on her pale skin. The Tuskens were easily understood, a people she could identify with. Blood, honor, death and family.

A Tusken Raider stepped forward. He walked with the stately dignity of a hunter. His shoulders were broad and he was taller than any of his tribesmen. A long brown braid hung over his shoulder. His robes were sewn with the teeth of womp rats, the bandages that covered his neck and head interwoven with the feathers of one of Tatooine's rare avians. His gloved hands rose in greeting, empty of weapons. "Asajj," he said, his expression unreadable behind his mask and goggles, his mind unreadable behind defenses any Jedi would have envied. "Suns smile on you."

"You have the woman," said Asajj to the man who had been a Jedi.

"A-hey," said the chieftain. He turned his face briefly toward one of the banthas. A long, heavy brown roll of burlap hung from its high-cantled saddle. A funeral shroud for the mother of Skywalker. The chieftain's men muttered darkly to one another in their harsh, hard language. The bantha carrying Shmi Skywalker lowed again, sadly this time.

Ventress felt a thrill in the pit of her stomach. Skywalker would come. He would come flying down from the void with murder in his heart, and perhaps the interesting Master Kenobi would follow. "We'll move to the caves," she said quietly. "As we discussed, A'sharad." She bowed low.

A'sharad did likewise. "As we discussed, Asajj," he said.

More joined them on the long trek to the Cliffs of Silent Stone Falling Downward. A hundred Tuskens and their banthas, all moving through the sand in staggered single-file. More arrived in silence. Asajj rode sidesaddle behind A'sharad on his bantha. The Cliffs loomed ahead, tall and red and stark in the light of the setting sun. Two hundred kilometers from Mos Eisley, ninety from Mos Espa. The caves had never been found by a non-Tusken. It was there that they buried their dead, there that they laid the bodies of the sick, the wounded, the senile naked beneath the blazing suns and let the eaters of carrion take their taxes in flesh. It was there, in the dark, that the Tuskens died.

"It's beautiful," said Asajj to A'sharad.

He held up a hand for silence. Asajj pulled up her hood and said nothing.

They reached the Cliffs of Silent Stone Falling Downward as night fell. There was a camp in the rock formations at the base of the great stone scarp, a place for the stabling of the banthas. They left the beasts, pausing only to untie the unconscious Shmi, and continued on foot into the rugged foothills, led by A'sharad. Asajj followed. For hours they climbed, sometimes up sheer drops with only cracks and crevices to cling to. Stubborn gorse and dead vines clung to the cliff face. In some places narrow stairs had been carved from the sand-blasted rock, leading always up and up. Asajj followed A'sharad as he climbed. He was a natural, springing lightly from one handhold to the next without pause for consideration.

In the dark, they came upon a cave mouth. A'sharad reached it first and his people waited below on a narrow ledge as their chieftain went down on his knees to the shadows and the dust. Asajj stood at his shoulder, arms folded. She felt something from the man, a strong surge of emotion quickly stemmed and stifled. A name, shouted to the dark in anguish. _Father!_

A'sharad rose, his mind silent once again. He looked at Asajj, masked and silent, and then turned and strode into the shadows. She went with him, the sounds of the other Tuskens climbing the ladder to the cave echoing quietly from the walls around her. With them was Shmi Skywalker, carried between two raiders on a travois.

Six hundred paces, and the cave ended in a sort of clearing. Cold, flat moonlight shone down through a well in the stone on a circle of hide tents. A bonfire blazed in the center of the circle and nine Tuskens bent by age and war sat cross-legged around it. A'sharad moved past the tents and into the light. He cleared his throat. The nine Tusken elders turned to him, then stood. Their robes were longer and finer than those of the people now clustered behind Asajj at the mouth of the cave. They wore necklaces made with the teeth of Krayt Dragons. "A'sharad," said one of them.

Another growled and snarled something in the impenetrable Tusken tongue. A'sharad replied in kind, spreading his hands wide.

The first Tusken barked something else, then gestured to the shadows at the cave mouth. Asajj turned and saw the two raiders carrying Shmi move forward. They laid the woman at the edge of the fire, then bowed low and withdrew. The elders stared in silence at the woman, faces unreadable behind their masks. Asajj could feel their fear and confusion. One elder put a hand to his face and turned away, overcome. Another merely nodded.

Consent.

Raiders came forward to join the elders at their fire. Others took Shmi away to the largest of the tents, where the prisoners of the wars between the tribes were kept. Asajj watched the older woman's face, lined and careworn. The tent flap closed behind Shmi Skywalker and her captors. At the fire, one of the elders had begun to tell a story. The tribe listened with rapt attention.

"Come," said A'sharad, laying a hand on Asajj's shoulder. "We will speak."

They went to the chieftain's tent, a structure of hide and sand-scoured wood no different from any of the others in the circle. Inside it was hot and close, bare but for a half-filled bookshelf of dark wood and a simple sleeping pallet. Asajj pushed back her hood and threw her cloak aside as A'sharad unwound the bandages that kept his mask and goggles pressed against his face. The red lines of both were visible on his pale, chapped skin. He had a strong face, lined and bitter. His eyes were a deep, dark black. A man, not a Tusken.

"Skywalker will come here," said A'sharad, working with gloved fingers at the buckles of his overtunic and heavy robes.

"A sort of test, I think," said Asajj. She reached behind her back and undid the fastenings of her long, heavy skirts. They pooled around her feet. "Lord Sidious and my master mean to see him tried before he joins them."

"You will see that he kills none of my people," said A'sharad. His torso was lean and muscular beneath his robes. He bent down to unlace his soft leather boots, and then he kicked them away. Straightening, he crossed the tent and gripped the front of Asajj's singlesuit in one hand. "Swear it."

"Make me," hissed Asajj, pushing her face close to A'sharad's.

He kissed her, hard. His lips were dry, his jaw unshaven. He tasted of sandalwood and sweat.

Asajj flattened herself against the older man, her hips moving in a slow rhythm. He tore her singlesuit down the front and his right hand moved to cup her left breast as his left hand slipped down her back to the curve of her buttocks. She stepped out of her smallclothes and pushed back against A'sharad's mouth, forcing him toward the pallet. They fell down together onto the hard bed. Asajj undid A'sharad's breaches and took him into her. He thrust, grunting, and she laughed high and loud and clear. Faces danced before her eyes as A'sharad's teeth grazed her neck, her lips, her shoulder. Dooku, grave and powerful. Grievous, wrath dripping from his every flat, mechanical word. Maul, scarred and tattooed.

Kenobi, quiet and authoritative.

"Yes," she snarled, arching her back as A'sharad moved in her, faster and faster. The chieftain's dark eyes bored into hers as they fucked in the dark, in the shadows and dust.

OBI-WAN

Obi-Wan sat for the first time in one of the high-backed seats in the Jedi Council's innermost sanctum. The other councilors sat around him, present either in the flesh or via hologram. Yoda, Mace, Ki-Adi transmitting from orbit above Rodia, Shaak Ti from the Chancellor Palpatine Surgical and Medical Center in Coruscant's Menari District. Of the others, only Master Plo Koon and Master Eeth Koth were physically present. It was a council of ghosts, blue and shimmering.

"Hmm," said Yoda, scratching at his chin with pointed nails. "Dark news, this is."

"An inquiry must be made on Kamino," said Plo Koon. "That we missed something so far-reaching...it shames me, Obi-Wan."

"Please, Master Plo," said Obi-Wan, "set your guilt aside. You are the finest head of judicial affairs this council has seen in a hundred years. The Kaminoans were deeply compromised by internal intrigue before the Republic ever contracted their services."

"That the clones themselves could be a liability to the Republic," said Shaak Ti, shaking her head sadly. "Unthinkable."

"More and more this war becomes a thing in shadow," said Oppo Rancisis, gesturing with a long-fingered hand. "The hands of the Sith are everywhere, my friends. We must move with caution."

"The matter of Count Dooku's information still stands," said Mace, his hard voice cutting through the low murmur of speeder traffic in the skylanes outside the council chamber's windows. "We can't afford to pass up a chance to strike at Confederate leadership."

"What we cannot afford is another Naboo," said Master Rancisis, shaking his head sadly. "Gunray may be dead, but his lies are not. Theed still burns every day on the morning news. This war has damaged our credit with the public and the Senate. I fear it may be irreparable."

"Impossible to undo, nothing is," said Yoda. His nails scratched the crown of his wrinkled and balding head. "Shadows, you fear, Master Rancisis. To keen to the ways of war, your mind is. Forget not that a Jedi Dooku once was. His Padawan, he mourns."

Rancisis acquiesced with a graceful nod, hands spread.

"It _is_ a trap," said Obi-Wan. "The planet's fortifications are...formidable. If we consider invasion, we must be prepared for a long and difficult engagement."

"Mmm," said Yoda, shaking his head sadly. "Clouded, the future around this matter is. Obscured are Dooku's motives." The ancient Master rubbed his wrinkled forehead.

"I do not believe we can pass by this opportunity," said Master Windu, steepling his fingers beneath his chin. His dark eyes, creased at the corners with age, were troubled. "Too many of us have been claimed by this war, Master Kenobi, Master Rancisis.

"We have a duty to the Galaxy, and to the Force."

"Much suffering the Clone War has caused," said Master Yoda. He stepped down from his worn council chair and limped to one of the sweeping windows, his coarse brown robes sweeping the polished floor. "Correct you are, Master Windu," he said heavily. "Prepare, we must."

Obi-Wan stood as the rest of the Council left their seats, talking quietly amongst themselves. He stared for a moment at Master Yoda, small and old and bent. The most learned and powerful Jedi in the Galaxy. The war, Obi-Wan knew, was killing him. As it was killing the Order, drowning it in a Galaxy's worth of pain and suffering. Yoda felt it more deeply than any of them, bore the wounds of the Republic on his tiny frame and led the Order in a war it had never been meant to fight.

"Master Kenobi," said Yoda, not turning. "Come. Talk, we will."

Obi-Wan crossed the council chamber as the other councilors, excepting Mace, made their exits. He halted beside Yoda and joined the old Master in staring out at the twilight skyline. "I sense grave danger should the Order go to Hypori, Master," he said quietly.

"Sense it as well, I do," said Yoda, passing a hand over his wrinkled face. He faltered, his claws tightening on his cane. His hand went to his chest. His old lips moved, mouthing words.

Obi-Wan felt it a moment later, an explosion of rage so white-hot and virulent that it made his stomach turn to water and his knees buckle. He saw Anakin standing in an empty room, saw the wrath and anguish in his Padawan's eyes. He saw death come slashing and crackling out of nowhere as Anakin exploded into vicious motion. "No!" he cried, and it seemed another voice cried out with him. A familiar voice. Obi-Wan staggered, pressing a hand to his temple. "Anakin."

"Grave danger, young Skywalker is in," said Yoda. He looked down at the Coruscant skyline. His expression was pained, his skin greyish with strain. "Face it alone, he will."

"I'll signal the ninth rimward fleet," said Obi-Wan. His thoughts were spinning madly around the focal point of Anakin's helpless rage. "They can move to support him, wherever he-"

And then the hate, the fury, the rage and the hurt all went suddenly cold.

"May the Force be with us," said Yoda quietly.

Obi-Wan sagged into his seat. The world seemed to tilt and crash around him. "Anakin," he said quietly.

COUNT DOOKU

Count Dooku paced the long, bare gallery corridor leading from his apartments to the High Council Hall at the heart of Confederate Tower. Outside, the sun was setting over Hypori. Dooku paced, reflecting. At thirteen he had been made Padawan. A Knighthood before the age of twenty-five. Full Master at thirty-seven. Qui-Gon, brave and wise and better than all the ivory-tower Jedi on their high seats of justice. A seat on the Council, until he had seen the corruption of the Senate creeping beneath the doors of that august chamber. Count of Serenno, twentieth to leave the Order.

Palpatine.

 _Kneel, my friend._ Wrinkled hands gripped the sides of his face, raised his eyes to Palpatine's harsh yellow ones. _Do you know the ways of the Dark Side?_

_Yes, Lord Sidious._

A smile, cold and reptilian. _Take the Sith within yourself, to the deepest reaches of your heart and mind. Cast aside the unnatural limitations of the Jedi Order, doomed by its arrogance to fall, and at last...Lord Tyranus...know your true self in the way of the Sith._

Yoda's anguished expression as Dooku left the Council Chamber for the last time. The ancient Master hobbling after him, frail and desperate. _My Padawan. Why?_

_There is nothing for me here._

The flames of Qui-Gon's funeral pyre. _My son._

"Damn," snapped Dooku. He halted by the window, hands resting on the sill. "Damn and blast." His hands became fists. He turned his back on the sunset and strode down the hall, toward his private entrance to the High Council Hall.

He could not trust Kenobi to bring the Council down upon Maul. That much was clear, for Obi-Wan had failed to learn his Master's boldness. There was nothing of Qui-Gon in him. No, if the Jedi failed to make their appearance at the Grand Ball then there was only one real alternative. Killing Maul himself. _Lord Sidious cares nothing for him. He is an animal, and his uses are behind him._

Dooku strode into the High Council Hall to the thunderous applause of thousands of representatives and the retinues of the Leadership Council. Neimoidians, Gossam, Aqualish, Koorivar, Skakoans, Muun and swarms of Geonosians. Hardly a human to be seen. Masking his revulsion, Dooku moved with stately vigor to the raised podium at the center of the hall. Huge holo-screens threw his smiling face up on the walls of the vast, soaring chamber and throughout the city. Circling droids broadcast it to relay stations in the city, and from there throughout the Galactic Core and the Holonet. He gripped the edges of the podium as the applause died down.

"My dear friends," said the Count, "today we stand on the brink of Galactic history. Today, in this chamber, we are poised to usher in a new era of civilization!

"Where the diseased heart of the Republic now beats, ruled by a corrupt and invalid aristocracy, we will place a new organ! A government of industry, of progress, of merit and initiative! We will sweep away the millennial dross that has choked the life out of this great Galaxy, and we will make Coruscant a beacon of hope and authority, not a breeding ground for nepotism and corruption!"

How they applauded him. How their vile knuckles clicked and snapped. How they hooted, screamed, alien mouths contorting and twisting. The Count raised his arms to accept their adulation, a beneficent smile masking his urge to vomit. He spoke for the better part of three hours, railing against Palpatine, against the Jedi, against the failing edifice of the Republic. He paced his dais, gesturing and declaiming, flinging his conviction out into the air with every shouted word. The Force gathered around him and he drank of it, infusing it into his voice and person until there was no separation. And when his speech reached its end, he had them. There was no sense of triumph, no victory march blared as the holo-droids panned around the Confederate Head of State. He was a picture of nobility, distinguished and composed at the podium in his black suit and red-lined cape. His eyes pierced out through the recording lenses, striking pride and fear into the hearts of billions of beings.

"Tomorrow night," said the Count, "we will inaugurate the beginning of the end of this war. As we speak General Grievous stands poised to bring the ax of Confederate might down on the neck of the Republic. Tomorrow night, my friends, we will celebrate the beginning of the Confederacy.

"And the end of Coruscant's rule."

The applause was wild, and it went on, and on, and on.

Dooku strode away from the podium, flipping his cape back over one shoulder with desultory ease. Soon, everything would be in place.

ANAKIN

Anakin Skywalker flew down the hillside steps to Varykino's recessed hangar. His robes whipped around him in a high wind. His mother was dying. He ran faster than he had ever run before, mindless and terrified. He could see her in his mind's eye, could feel her arms around him. She stood in their apartment on Tatooine, sweeping clean the dusty floor of their dining room. She sat in a dress of fine silks on a window seat beside a young man, prematurely silver-haired, and sipped from a glass of clear water. She was young and old, beautiful and careworn, loving and confused and frightened.

They had lived in a house in the dark.

They had lived on Tatooine; Watto's slaves.

The mouth of the hangar loomed before him and Anakin flew through it, bounding over a maintenance station with ease to land softly on the polished deck. Padmé was there, stepping out of a concealed lift tunnel just behind the long, sleek K-type Nubian yacht perched delicately on its spidery landing legs. She wore a long black dress and a headpiece hung with strings of tiny gems. A shawl draped her shoulders. Anakin skidded to a halt beside the yacht's landing ramp, his heart pounding in his chest. He could feel the Galaxy burning around him. He could smell the smoke.

"Anakin," said Padmé. She was walking toward him, beautiful and graceful and breakable. How could she delay him now, when he needed most to go, to flee, to run back to his mother's arms? Her hand touched his, light and cool.

"You can tell me. What's wrong?"

Statement before question. Establish trust. Politicians. A moment of white-hot rage swallowed Anakin, burning through his chest and reducing his skin to ashes. "The Sith have her," he said, and his voice was flat and dead in his own ears. He pulled his hand away from Padmé's, turning toward the ship. "They have my mother, on Tatooine."

_In the house in the swamp, a man stands at the window beside a tall Muun. They wear fine robes and they are talking about my mother. Arguing._

_The man turns away from the window and smiles faintly. He is familiar._

"You're certain?" asked Padmé. Her fingers were clenched in the folds of her cloak.

Anakin could smell her fear, sweet like perfumed wine as it beaded on her skin. "Give me the launch codes," he said, not turning. "Now."

Power rang through his voice. He held it close to fire within him, clinging to its slick coils as it bit and savaged his feverish skin. Power to crack bones, to rip up earth and rend minds to dust.

Padmé stared at him for a long moment, and then something sad and fragile flickered in her eyes and she moved past him. Her long, slim fingers tapped out the code on the keypad beside the landing ramp. The ship's hydraulic airlock doors slid open with a hiss of equalizing pressure. Anakin swept up the ramp and into the yacht's silent silver interior, heading for the cockpit. Padmé followed him and he did nothing to stop her. His hands found the control panel and he primed the yacht's powerful engines, ignoring the preflight routine. The hangar echoed with the roar of ion ignition as smoke blasted out of the Nubian's vents. The ship left its berth with a scream of metal on duracrete as its landing legs failed to collapse in time. Anakin ignored the instantaneous hails from planetary control and Theed's air towers. Padmé buckled herself with practiced speed into the co-pilot's chair, fingers flying over the instrument panel to clear their launch.

An hour to clear the atmosphere. Anakin could barely hear the crash and thunder of his own thoughts. His heart smashed against his breast, battering itself apart. He saw sand, the Tuskens in their long, coarse robes. A pale woman standing on a cliff, hands behind her back. An hour to clear the atmosphere. Anakin gripped the control yoke so tightly that his knuckles went white. He flung the yacht up through Naboo's stratosphere and into the void. Padmé said something quiet and the subdued beep and whistle of an R2 astromech droid answered. Anakin glanced to his right and saw the droid beside Padmé's seat, resting on its three treads as it entered hyperspace coordinates into the navicomputer with a programming probe.

The ship flashed to lightspeed, stars blurring around it. Anakin swept out of his seat and began to pace the spacious bridge, unable to stand still. He was betraying his Master and the Order, ignoring his mission and Padmé's-the Senator's-safety. And he didn't care.

"Anakin."

He stopped, half-turning. His hands shook on the steering yoke. Padmé was looking at him with fear and tenderness and a deep, cold hurt in her eyes. "I can't leave her," he heard himself say.

"I know you can't," said Padmé, rising from her seat. She put a hand on Anakin's shoulder and he seized her wrist before he could stop himself. Her skin was soft and cool.

"It's alright," she said, her lips close enough to brush his ear. "It's alright, Anakin." She embraced him from behind and Anakin's hand slid from her arm. He sagged, a sob ripping free of his chest. Anger boiled away into helpless grief and anguish. Padmé held him close against her body, and then he turned and kissed her, hard. Her lips yielded to his and he saw the surprise, the need, the hunger and the guilt in her eyes. He stood, returning Padmé's embrace, pushing her back toward the cabin wall. Her mouth moved against his. Her hips twitched.

"I know you want this," said Anakin, tears drying on his cheeks. "I know you wanted him."

Padmé shuddered, but her fingers tore at Anakin's robes, pulling them off. Her tongue slid between his lips as she undressed him. He smiled, a bleached and barren smile, and reached out with the Force to tear her dress off.

ASAJJ

A'sharad rose from his bed when they had finished. He dressed himself, braided his hair and wrapped his face, hiding every inch of skin. His face vanished behind the mask of the Tusken chieftain he had become in exile. "Kill him, when he comes," he said. "I do not wish complications."

Asajj laughed and rolled onto her side, naked on the coarse sheets. "Don't worry, Hett," she murmured softly. "I'll kill him."

A'sharad left the village, and took his people with him.

ANAKIN

They landed in the desert's heart, at the base of a sheer sandstone cliff. Anakin triggered the landing ramp and walked down it without looking back, though he knew Padmé was watching him from the ship. He could feel it. He could feel everything. The stair in the cliffside was easy to find. He ignored it, launching himself thirty feet up the rock face and seizing the bare stone. He climbed, hauling himself hand over hand toward his mother's anguished presence in the Force.

The Force. It pounded madly all around him, so much more _real_ than it had ever been. This was the solution, then. Not to shut everything away behind a wall of iron discipline but to give it free rein. To feed it until it burst its chains and ran wild.

Anakin climbed until he came to a cleft in the rock, and then he took his lightsaber from his belt and pulled up the hood of his cloak, and went on into the darkness. The Tusken camp was like any of a hundred he'd seen from a distance, Bantha-hide tents stretched over bone frames, all set around a burned-out cookfire. Walls of weathered red stone rose over all of it, but the sky was open. Blue, washed-out and endless. Anakin staggered into the circle of tents, letting his senses drag him onward, onward to the largest pavilion. He stalked through the gaping entryway and saw her hanging there, tied to a wooden frame by her wrists. Her skin was chapped, her lips cracked and bloody. What they had done to her, he could not say.

Totems hung from the ceiling. The grinning skulls of animals. Feathers and dried gourds.

The power went out of him, yanked away in a single vicious moment. He was drained, useless, a burned-out torch. He crossed the room in three long strides and slashed her bonds with a sweep of his saber. She crumpled and he caught her, holding her close. Her heartbeat stuttered weakly in her chest. Her eyes fluttered open and the faintest of smiles creased her lips. "Anni," she wheezed. Blood leaked from the corner of her mouth in a sluggish trickle. "Look at you."

"It's alright, mom," he said. The words fell from his mouth and broke on the tent's dirt floor. "It's alright. You're going to be fine."

"I knew," she said. Her hand rose to brush her son's cheek. Her fingers trembled. "I knew...you'd come back."

He closed his eyes, shutting her ravaged face away. "Mom, please..."

"I...l-l..."

And she was still.

Anakin stood, letting his mother's corpse slump to the floor of the tent. What was she now? Just so much meat. His hands shook. He stared down at her, at the little scars on her calloused hands, at the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, at the sunken, papery skin stretched over her skull.

And then he turned and stalked out of the tent into the dying light of Tatooine's suns, into the shadows of the cliff walls. There was a woman standing by the fire pit, tall and pallid, her skull hairless and traced with delicate blue veins. Her eyes were colorless, her bloodless lips curved into a predatory smile. She wore two lightsabers, hilts curved in the old style, at her belt. "Skywalker," she murmured, tasting the word.

Anakin flung himself across the circle in a rushing leap. His lightsaber snarled to life in his hand, bathing the rock faces with blue-white radiance. The woman met his eyes, and then she sidestepped with unnatural speed and ignited her own weapons with a double flick of her slender white wrists. Burning bars of crimson snapped to life as Anakin landed, staggering, and slashed at the air where she'd been a moment before. His cloak swirled around him as he blocked her overhand blow, lunged out in a vicious riposte and ducked under a scissoring strike. The Force burned in him, coiling like a lover in his chest, spreading in a warm current through his veins and into his brain. Where a fire raged, consuming thought and reason.

The woman spun, skirts flying, and then came on in a wild flurry of blows. Light flashed across her angular face, first blue then red as their sabers crossed and parted, clashed and broke apart. Sparks exploded around them as they moved in a rough and brutal dance around the circle. Anakin hammered at the woman's defenses, beating her down with his greater strength. His arms were iron, his chest a roaring furnace. He beat her back. He broke her forms. He screamed with wordless rage, spittle spraying from his lips as he spun and slashed and drank of the Force until it leaked from his pores and spread across the sandy ground beneath his feet. The woman laughed and danced away from him, her small feet sliding over the sand. Her lightsabers flicked and darted, slashing Anakin's cloak and blistering his skin. He followed, lurching through a twisted repetition of the Ataru Obi-Wan had drilled into his stance.

And the woman turned and fled, laughing as she ran like oil toward the darkness of a crevasse in the rock. Her lightsabers winked out, and she was gone. Into the darkness. Anakin followed, racing into the cleft in the stone. On and on, over piles of fallen rock and past odd carvings and the scrimshawed skulls of dead banthas hanging like sentinels from the crevasse walls. Blue light washed the bones of Tatooine as Anakin raced onward, down and down. Following the woman's harsh and loveless laughter. He came at last to a temple carved into the earth, its face looming over him at the far side of an expansive well. Somewhere, water dripped.

The temple was old, its columns broken and sagging, the statues to either side of its yawning entrance weathered by time into featureless forms. Tuskens, perhaps. Anakin strode onward, his breath rasping in his throat. He passed through the door and into the shadows, eyes searching within the dim sphere of his saber's illumination. His senses raced, probing for any trace of the woman. The Force thundered in his ears like a raging waterfall.

Somewhere, water dripped.

She attacked from behind, dropping down from the ceiling and drawing deeply on the Force to throw herself feet-first at Anakin's back. He flew, winded, and hit sand-covered stone. He rolled over the floor, through an entryway and onto the lip of a decaying gallery. Water dripped. The woman came toward him, hips swaying, sabers sparking as they brushed the ground. "Skywalker," she said, rolling the word on her pointed tongue. Her small, firm breasts heaved with exertion. Her pale skin was slick with sweat.

Anakin lurched to his feet. The woman struck, sliding forward and thrusting with both glowing blades. He parried, reeling, and felt his foot slip over the gallery's lip. Silence. The scuff of cloth-wrapped boots over silt-strewn stone. The woman leaning toward him, thin lips peeling back from white, even teeth in a mad grin. Falling, he slashed at her face, twisting with the force of the blow as though he were a dancer. She fell into a crouch, letting blue plasma bathed her face in harsh light as the blade whipped over her head. Her own saber lanced out in a neat stop-thrust, severing Anakin's left arm just below the elbow. He grunted in surprise, numbness spreading through him as he slipped off of the gallery and into open air.

And he fell.


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE FALL

ANAKIN

Anakin lay on the temple floor, half-submerged in the dark, cold water. Overhead a red light burned, falling like a star from the vaulted heights of the temple. He knew what it was, but his mind turned slowly. Thoughts slipped like rogue stars through his broken consciousness, colliding and fracturing in the darkness of the collapsing temple. His left arm ached.

And then the Force was in him. He stood, nameless and languid. His lightsaber rose from the water and slapped against his palm. Heat burned in his chest, a furnace of white-hot fury and pain. It consumed him. He looked up and saw the woman falling toward him, saw her bared teeth gleam in the darkness, saw the friction of her sabers cutting air. Reaching out, he seized her with his will and flung her against the temple wall. She screamed as her bones broke. He tore her from the fractured stone of the wall, snapped her wrists and took the sabers from her hands. They floated like beacons in the darkness, bathing the world in lurid radiance. Anakin regarded them. He met the eyes of the woman. She hung in the air, throat stretched out, skin flushed and slick with sweat.

What was it, to kill? He had done it before. Ripping the life from a husk of meat. Anakin's eyes narrowed. _She_ had struck first. It would be justice to take _her_ arm, to hack her head from her shoulders and leave her in the dark. Leave her to rot. She whimpered, twitching feebly in his Force grip. He let her fall with a splash into the water. Her sabers plunked down after her, vanishing beneath the cold, dark surface. Three bounding steps and he had reached her. His lightsaber snapped to life. He swung it, shearing through the air.

A familiar voice, anguished and broken. _No, Anakin._

The woman's eyes widened. Her lips moved, trembling.

The lightsaber caught her just below the nose and clove her head in two. Anakin lurched past the corpse, gritting his teeth against a sudden onslaught of pain that lanced from his severed arm up and into his skull. He sagged against the temple's mold-slimed wall, staring with blurred vision at the woman's body. One hand, bent at an awkward angle, reached up from the water to grasp stiffly at the distant ceiling. Her heavy skirts drifted in the eddying currents.

Pain flared again behind Anakin's eyes. He closed them, gritting his teeth as his breath rasped in his throat. The stone was rough against his back. It took a year to find the steps cut into the temple wall, an eternity to scale them, dragging himself along inch by tortured inch. He staggered from that place and went to where his mother lay. The Force deserted him, drained like poison from a wound, and he fell to his knees and clutched her corpse against his chest with his one arm. Sobs tore his throat as phlegm clotted his every breath and pain blazed through his battered body. He had no strength left. No integrity to abandon, no love to forsake. He had nothing. Only an empty ache where his self had been, where Obi-Wan's and the Order's teachings had stood proud and strong.

What good was any of it, if this was what it brought him?

He was through with all of it.

* * *

 

He found the Tuskens higher up among the tumbled corridors of stone. He smelled them through the stench of his own burned flesh, felt their minds turning through the rituals of their nightly chores. Elders hunched around a fire. Hide tents anchored to the rock with durasteel crampons scavenged from the outside world. They had killed his mother and abandoned his corpse, and then they had come here and pitched camp as though nothing had happened at all. Two warriors guarded the entrance to the camp. He came to them without stealth, ignoring their grunts of inquiry, their warning swings and thrusts with their gaffi poles. He killed them with one stroke, slicing through warriors and weapons alike, tears running down his sunburned face. The camp didn't hear the killing. The sounds of family and daily life had blinded them to any disruption. The children tussling around their fires. The warriors dicing in the sand. The women weaving robes from bantha fur.

Anakin dropped like a needle through the fragile membrane of their world, scything down a warrior just as the alien turned at the sound of his approaching footsteps. The masked raider's clansmen flew to their feet with howls of rage. He screamed back at them, a one-armed ghost in charred and tattered robes, and flew among them without mercy. Their clawed hands drew blood from his skin. Their bandaged faces pressed close as they grappled with him, as they pressed their bodies against him in a shouting, howling mob while behind them the camp seethed with terror. He cut through them, even one-armed. None had a blade that could stand against his, but still they came and threw themselves in his path, and he screamed as he killed them, as heads flew from shoulders and breasts opened up and bodies were reduced to smoking parts lying askew in the sand. "You killed my mother," he wailed, as though they'd understand, as though any language but the burning fury of his lightsaber held meaning in the moment. He gripped one of the last survivors in the Force and shook him. "You killed her!" He shook him harder. "Killed!" Bones broke as the Tusken's head whipped back and forth. "HER!"

Something flew at him at waist height as the broken warrior fell and Anakin cleared the mob's last broken remnants. He stabbed without thinking, lunging forward, and the camp fell silent.  _They're not people,_ Anakin thought frantically as the little body fell to the dust and lay still, as the lamentations of the Tusken women rose around him in an eerie chorus. His eyes darted between their veiled faces as they rent their robes and fell to their knees in the dust. _They're not people._ He conjured up his mother's image, the raw red flesh at her wrists where the Tuskens had bound her, the scars on her dry, chapped lips. The terrible thinness of her in his arms. He held to it as he had held to her, gripping it close. And it gave him the strength that he needed.

The strength to finish what he had begun.

* * *

 

He left the village under the moon's pale light, staggering like a drunkard in the residual heat of day. Padme was waiting at the cliffside with the shuttle. He fell onto the ramp. She pulled him inside and helped him to a bunk as the autopilot guided them toward orbit, away from the dead.

"What happened?" she asked him in a whisper.

Anakin raised a hand to touch her face, and found it missing.

Darkness swallowed him.

OBI-WAN

It came down to Palpatine at the end, as all things seemed to. Obi-Wan, accompanied by Mace and Yoda, presented to the Chancellor what he had learned on Hypori, reciting word for word his discussion with the Count. Palpatine listened in silence, hands steepled atop his desk, brow furrowed in concentration. At length, when Obi-Wan had given his report, the aging statesman rose and strode to the sweeping window that walled his office. In the distance, the Jedi Temple reared up from the endless cityscape. Lanes of speeder traffic formed patterns of dizzying geometric complexity in the growing dusk. Palpatine clasped his hands behind his back with a weary sigh.

"What is your recommendation, Master Kenobi?" asked Palpatine after a short while had passed. He turned, waiting, his careworn face cast half in shadow by the dim lighting.

Obi-Wan swallowed, glancing at Yoda. The ancient master's eyes were half-closed, his lips moving silently. Master Windu was unreadable as always, engaged in inspecting one of the Chancellor's impressionist statues. "Dooku is a formidable opponent," said Obi-Wan. "He would not have given freely any information he did not intend to use against us. Or at least to his own ends." He shifted in his seat, trying not to focus on the flash of rage and grief he had felt from Anakin. The ninth outer rim fleet was moving to support the boy. That would have to be enough.

"A victory at Hypori would, of course, be of no small value," said Mace, still staring with interest at one of the Chancellor's statutes. Obi-Wan thought it might have been a sage, robed and hooded. Or perhaps a tower. Master Windu turned to face the Chancellor. "Strategically and morally both. Our defeat there at Grievous's hands was a heavy blow against civilian morale."

Palpatine nodded slowly, frowning. His eyes strayed back to the traffic moving in regimented lines over Coruscant's luminous surface. "Yes," he said after a short while had passed. "General Kenobi, General Windu, Master Yoda, I would request that you lead the assault."

Yoda bowed his wrinkled head. "Of course, Chancellor," he said.

Mace Windu nodded, expressionless.

"Then let us waste no time," said Palpatine. "The First Core Fleet is on high alert. It will depart tonight."

There were details to discuss, commands to finalize and force distributions to determine. Obi-Wan slogged through the rest of the meeting without focus or enthusiasm. The ninth fleet would reach Anakin just before the assault began. Would it be fast enough? What had happened to the boy?

"A moment of your time, Master Kenobi?"  
Obi-Wan blinked, surprised to find that Palpatine's office was empty save for himself and the Chancellor. Palpatine's expression was one of friendly concern. "Master Yoda informed me of our friend's situation," he said. "Young master Skywalker's welfare is a matter of great importance to this government. Rest assured, the fleet will arrive in time; and once it has recovered him, it will join you at Hypori. Set your concerns aside, Master Kenobi. There's nothing you can do for him now." He smiled reassuringly.

Obi-Wan bowed. "Thank you, Chancellor," he said.

"May the Force be with you, Master Kenobi," said Palpatine.

Clones patrolled the halls of the Senate Round. Identical, armored in gleaming white, blaster rifles slung over their shoulders. Obi-Wan found himself regarding them with suspicion. Had the Kaminoans double-crossed the Republic? Had some other force, perhaps Maul's shadowy master, insinuated itself into the Grand Army? Obi-Wan halted beside a tall window, letting the light of the setting sun wash over him. He would go to Hypori. He had his duty to the Republic.

Why did it feel as though he was going the wrong way?

JANGO

It wasn't hard to see the Chancellor in private. Not for the most recognizable man in the Republic. There was a press conference during the army's departure. Jango wore his armor. The crowds liked it. It made him seem more martial, and his clones more capable by association. He stood beside Palpatine, chin held high and spine stiff, while the Chancellor spoke to a crowd of millions from a podium erected behind the landing fields of the Coruscant Fleet. Overhead, _Venator_ -class star destroyers were ascending to orbit. Their engines washed the upper atmosphere in light. Palpatine looked young and vigorous, energized by the cheers of his supporters.

And when the festivities were over, when the crowds had broken apart and the fleet had left Coruscant, Jango asked the Chancellor if they might talk. He felt a brief touch from Palpatine's mind, but his own thoughts were well shielded. "Of course," said the older man, his statesman's mask too much in place to allow a refusal. "I would be glad for the opportunity, master Fett."

They went to the Chancellor's office. Palpatine moved to sit behind his desk, sighing as he did. "I must say," said the Chancellor. "This _is_ irregular, Jango. If you wish to-"

Jango flung himself at the older man. The only way to kill a Jedi was to be fast, faster than they were. His fist smashed into the Chancellor's face, throwing him back against his chair. He vaulted over Palpatine's desk and tackled the politician to the floor. "Threaten my son," he said harshly, seizing the other man's head in his hands. He slammed it against the carpet. Palpatine gasped, slapping at Jango's arms with wrinkled, blue-veined hands. Jango bashed Palpatine's head against the floor again, muscles in his shoulders bulging as he began to strangle the Chancellor. He leaned down, putting his own face close to Palpatine's. "This is what you get," he said. "This is how you die."

Blood dripped from the Chancellor's broken nose. His face purpled. His eyes bulged, their retinas darkening to an ugly yellow shot through with veins of black and orange. Palpatine's mouth twitched, working madly. Jango looked up just in time to see a lightsaber, lit and spinning, flash toward him from where it had lain hidden in a statue. The sculpture, a robed woman with hands folded in the sleeves of her vestments, had been gashed open by the blade's ignition.

It took Jango's arms off in a cloud of sparks and boiling blood. The bounty hunter fell back against the Chancellor's desk. He stared at the charred stumps of his arms. Blood beat behind his temples. He heard a door open, somewhere. A thousand miles away.

"They get worse every year," said Palpatine, his voice hoarse. "Have another one brought up from storage, Mas."

"As you wish, Chancellor," came the swift reply of Mas Amedda, Palpatine's vice chair. The Chagrian joined his master a moment later, staring down at Jango with distaste.

Jango let a smile twist his lips. His face felt numb. He could hear his lungs rasping. Palpatine knelt down before him and put a hand on his cheek. "I am so very disappointed in you, Jango," he said. "And here I thought we were getting along.

"You'll have to do better next time, Mandalorian."

Palpatine stood and walked away. Mas Amedda pulled a sleek, compact blaster from his robes. "I'll be seeing you shortly, master Fett," he said.

And then he pulled the trigger.

GRIEVOUS

Grievous sat in the command chair of the _Invisible Hand_ , watching Duro's surface burn. The engagement had been a short one. Now his fleet waited in high orbit, protected from ambush by the mass shadows of the planet and its moons. Gutted Republic cruisers drifted with them, breaking apart as their orbits decayed and the planet drew them down into its embrace.

It was good. It was war.

The General surveyed his bridge, wasted muscle twitching behind his mask. The Neimoaidian helmsmen were bent over their instrument panels under the watchful eye of Captain Mar Tuuk. Battle droids manned the gunnery stations, hands jacked into the dreadnought's bridge computer. Grievous rose from his seat and moved to the holo display set into the deck in front of his command chair. He clasped his mechanical hands behind his back. Three hyperspace buoys blinked in perfect sync with one another, marking the position and activities of Coruscant's fleets. The Core Worlds glowed gently around them like a sea of sparkling gemstones.

All three buoys flared a bright, actinic white.

Grievous stared for a moment at the flash. A flutter of fleet communication ran through the bridge as the circuits transmitted queries from the armada's captains. "Assume lance formation," said Grievous, circling the holo projector. His metal feet clanked against the decking. Years of scheming, careful positioning, a dejarik master playing both sides of the board until every piece was set just so.

Grievous reached out, his hand moving through the projection. He made a fist and Coruscant was crushed, the core smashed into splinters of light. "Captain," he said, withdrawing his hand and turning back to the bridge, "jump the fleet."

 

DARTH MAUL

The ball was lavish and noisome, the palace ballroom a gilded monstrosity adrip with chandeliers of adegan crystal. Each chandelier, Maul knew, sported a single crystal stolen from a fallen Jedi's lightsaber. It pleased the Count to dance by the light of his enemies' weapons. A Bith orchestra ensconced in a cloistered nave played martial pieces and the classical compositions of their most august maestros as the potentates of a thousand worlds waltzed, bickered, lied, connived, and gossiped on the grand mosaic of the ballroom floor. Maul stood with the Count and Wat Tambor, Foreman of the Techno Union. The Foreman was droning on about tariffs on duracrete-mixing utility droids while the Count nodded politely. Tambor loved the sound of his own voice. Maul sipped at his flute of smooth Duros smokewine, surveying the sea of guests. He nodded to Dooku and slipped away into the press. They gave him a wide berth.

The ballroom echoed in the Force. Deceit, lust, avarice, panic, hope. It seemed that a slurry of uncontrolled emotions seethed around Maul's feet as, dressed in his crisp black tunic and trousers, he made his way toward the cloister, fleeing the bickering and petty feuds of the open floor in favor of the orchestra's eddying strains. He passed a knot of Gossam merchant khans in bronze headpieces and elaborate robes of red brocade, their long trains repulsor-assisted, serving droids hovering at their elbows with the finest liquors and the latest narcotics. The bloat and bureaucracy of the Senate was loathsome, but this hedonistic aristocracy at the Confederacy's pinnacle held even less appeal for Maul. At least Grievous might be termed a warrior, and loathe as he was to admit it, the Count's skills with a blade rivaled his own. These people, though. They revolted him. Skakoans honking and muttering as they shuffled past like the monks of some church of overpaid engineers, metal cowling shielding their faces, goggles gleaming with perspiration. Aqualish delegations trickling into hostile cliques determined by their ancient internecine feuds, their insectile palps spraying spit as they insulted one another. Skeletal Muun aping their chairman's appreciation for the symphony the Bith were playing, each squirming to outdo the others in the effusiveness of their fawning. Geonosians shrieking about positronic combat minds in their migraine of a language.

Dooku's voice echoed over the assembly, his rich baritone amplified a hundredfold by microphones cunningly concealed in the collar of his tunic. Maul, his litany of hatred against the grandees of the CIS interrupted, glanced back and saw the Count rising up from the crowd on an elaborate gilded podium that must have lain concealed beneath the floor. The orchestra ceased to play and silence swept over the ballroom as the Count's platform completed its ascent and towering holo-projections of the man himself sprang to life on the walls. Outside, Maul knew, the crowds of second-rate nobility and merchants would watch the address projected on the palace walls while across the galaxy the Count would speak from every longwave and holovid set in every cantina and hab block between Tatooine and Coruscant. He sneered, his burned face twisting. Words were nothing.

"My friends," Dooku began, spreading his arms wide. "Today we right old wrongs. Today the scales of justice will be balanced and our enemies called to account for their litany of crimes. Families broken, worlds set aflame and left to burn, wealth squeezed from the hands of inventors and the stewards of the people and into the coffers of bureaucrats! This alliance, this common cause, this humble Confederacy of Independent Systems has beaten back the armies of the corrupt and overweening Republic, has put paid to the self-righteous clerics of their Jedi Order, and now, on this day, stands on the very doorstep of Coruscant! Let no shade or sorrow of our past defeats be with us now, for all must work as one to manifest the glorious future that awaits us! Next year, my comrades in arms and in liberty, I pledge to you that we shall hold this self-same celebration _on the steps of the Senate Rotunda!"_  

Maul turned away amidst thunderous applause, impatient and disinterested in the Count's rabble-rousing bluster. The ballroom felt overwarm and the windswept plains of Hypori called to him. A speeder ride would cleanse him of his doubt and frustration, would hone his focus until he could turn his mind to the destruction of his enemies. To open his bloodfin's throttle and accelerate out past the city's outskirts, out past the standing stones and the public gardens to the endless rocky fields where he could lose himself in the tearing wind. And then he felt them. Guarded minds, moving through the crowds of well-dressed alien nobility and merchant royalty. They slid mercurial and swift across his perceptions, the Force sluicing off of their defenses. Maul dropped his drinking flute. It shattered at his feet. Those near enough to hear it break directed skittish stares his way, but Maul's whole attention was bent on the approaching minds. Could it be...

There.

Kenobi slipped through the crowd like a ripple through still water. Simple to fool the weak-minded sycophants gathered in the ballroom. Simple to bend their attention elsewhere, to walk unseen beneath the shroud of the Force in the grey and ragged space between seeing and blindness. Windu. Mundi. Plo Koon. Rancisis slithering like a grotesque serpent, green-skinned Yaddle scuttling in his wake. The enemy was here. Scores of them. Maul bared his blackened teeth in a savage grin and drew his lightsaber from his sash. 

_Good._

Maul ignited his lightsaber's blades and spun the saberstaff, crimson light smearing through the air. One of the insignificant worms in the crowd screamed as the light bisected her arm and left her with a smoking stump. Those nearest Maul recoiled in horror like waves rushing outward from a stone dropped into water. They scrambled over one another, making accidental ramparts of their fallen bodies as the Lord of Pain snarled a challenge to his foes. Kenobi, pretenses abandoned, drew his blade and charged as the Count's voice boomed out, commanding an evacuation, ordering in the battle droids awaiting deployment in the palace cellars. Lightsabers bloomed amid the screaming crowd as the Jedi plunged toward Maul like vrelts converging on a rancor, leaping over the heads of the seething assemblage. Screams rifled the air as panic spread and crushes built around the archways leading from the ballroom. The engines of gunships and landing craft thumped and thundered, muffled by the palace walls. The Count's podium dropped from view, plunging down its access tunnel and out of view. His towering projected images almost seemed to smile in the instant before the feed was cut and battle was joined. The coward was fleeing.

Maul crouched and leaped at Kenobi with a wild scream. They crashed together high above the floor, black robes and brown flapping as they traded blows to no result and flew apart. Kenobi landed lightly, skipping back a handful of controlled fencer's steps as he scanned the crowd around him for threats. Ten meters distant, Maul hit the ground and rolled, coming up into a crouch and sprinting toward his foe as blaster fire began to shred the thinning crowds. The battle droids, programmed to prioritize killing Jedi over protecting their corporate masters, had arrived. Maul laughed at the despair painted like a mural across the faces of the Confederate high and mighty, and then his world was red and blue, flesh and cloth, the dance of death between masters of the blade. Kenobi fought with impeccable precision, but Maul could see the hate behind the Jedi's mask of monkish calm. Within this dutiful man lurked the grieving, raging boy who had scarred Maul's face, who had defended his master's body with a madman's valor. It was just a matter of drawing him out.

Maul spun, his saberstaff blurring. Kenobi's measured thrusts were knocked aside. "Where's your fire?" Darth Maul mocked him. A Chagrian woman with a scarred face came at him, her lightsaber pike a blur, and he seized the weapon's handle in one hand and hurled her to the floor with the momentum of her charge. The blades of his own staff spun and her head rolled free, trailing sparks as Kenobi retreated on guard, hatefully serene. "Don't you miss your master, boy?"

The other Jedi were closing in, a cordon of multicolored lightsabers closing ranks as their wielders advanced over hills of shattered and broken battle droids. Blood and oil were mingled on the ballroom's mosaic tiles. Across the vast expanse, a chandelier crashed to the ground and sent shards of crystal whizzing through the air as dozens died beneath its fragile blades and crushing weight. Blaster fire echoed in the adjoining halls. The Grand Army of the Republic was making its entrance. Maul let the Dark Side fill him as his enemies approached. He felt his old wounds burn, a tapestry of scars incurred in the brutal gauntlet of his master's training and in countless duels and battles. How many times had he skulked and slithered through Coruscant's underworld at Sidious's bidding? How many crime lords, politicians, and information brokers had he killed and maimed in inglorious combat? Once the old man had sent him to a rival's house simply to stand beside the crib of the woman's newborn daughter until she cast her vote to usher in one of the hundreds of seemingly inconsequential policies that had paved the Sith Lord's path to power. 

This battle, this desperate struggle for survival, it suited him better. It made him feel alive. The fear of the weak he relished, but the fear of the mighty was nectar and mother both. His soul smoked. The world shivered and shook. He killed a fleeing Gossam woman, took her head from her shoulders as she sprinted past in a blind panic. Her body staggered on a few more steps, then fell. The Jedi continued their glacial advance, more of their number warding them from blaster fire as more droids clanked into the ballroom. The dropped-decacred rattle of droidekas rolling into action joined the din as the southwestern entryways began to disgorge clones, whole platoons of the white-armored roaches laying down fire so that the ballroom hummed and crackled with the stink of tibanna gas. Kenobi fell back into the ranks of his comrades. Maul slashed the floor, filling the air with sparks. "Jedi coward," he taunted as the thicket of blades drew tighter still, as the air began to shimmer with their combined heat. Gathering his strength, he made a wild leap over the swinging blades of his enemies, soaring past them to land skidding in a drift of broken droids. He staggered, finding his balance, and then leaped again as clone blasters pounded his perch into slag. His fingers caught the rim of one of the ballroom's massive chandeliers. He dragged himself up, his lightsaber shaving several crystals off the swinging contrivance as below the Jedi wheeled in an ungainly flock to follow. One of their number, a crested Vurk, took a blaster bolt to the hip and had to be dragged behind their battle line by his fellow Jedi, his weakness coddled and protected.

Maul steadied himself in a crouch and looked down at his gloved hand. Sharp crystals had sliced his palm. Blood soaked the cloth and dripped out from the valley of his hand. He drew his fingers from his brow down to his chin, smearing his own gore into a mask as hot rage swelled and throbbed within him. _Kill Kenobi,_ went the old refrain, the song of his furious blood as it roared through his veins. The maddening din he'd heard while fleeing for his life across the rooftops of Theed, half his face a mask of smoking flesh.  _Kill Kenobi, Kill Kenobi, Kill Kenobi._

Windu vaulted onto the frame of a nearby chandelier, teetering with one hand on its tension cable as it swayed beneath him. Other Jedi joined them, soaring up like Mon Cal water dances through the air to land atop the decadent crystal monstrosities. A few caught fire mid-leap and fell back to the charnel field below, their bodies sliding over the tiles to lie among the numberless dead and the sparking remnants of the droid guard. Soft boots inched over the chandeliers' durasteel frames. Maul and the Jedi stood in an uneasy balance, waiting for the moment, trusting in the Force. It came. They leaped as one out over the dizzying emptiness between the clashing, swinging chandeliers, ten figures scribing lines of light against the darkness of the vaulted ceiling. Of the nine Jedi, only one, a Talz wielding a bronze lightsaber with a blade as thick as Maul's arm, gauged the Sith Lord's leap correctly. He died for it, cloven from his shoulder to his groin, and plummeted as Maul made a desperate, scrabbling landing on the chandelier his enemy had abandoned to meet him. The others came on, the noise of the battle below falling away until only the hammer of Maul's heartbeat and the hum of the lightsabers remained. Maul spun and dodged along the chandelier's frame. He killed Luminara Unduli with his hands, crushing her trachea with a swift, sharp two-fingered jab and then breaking her knee with a kick. He left her choking and vaulted out into the darkness, pirouetting through the air, his blood aflame as, turning, he saw Opo Rancisis and Plo Koon leading a charge against the beleaguered battle droids, droideka shields like iridescent stones amid the turmoil. Kenobi streaked past him, scoring a shallow burn along his ribs, and Maul landed badly and slipped off of the chandelier he'd aimed himself at. 

He landed hard in the midst of a clone formation and twisted on his back on the bloody tiles, driving his saber's blade through a lieutenant's breastplate as he sent one of the copies staggering with a savage kick to the jaw. He came to his feet, his burned side leaking blood, his left leg stiff, and finished the false man with a thrust to the throat while his faceless squadmates scrambled to turn their blasters inward. They died swiftly, wheat in his storm. He whirled at the sound of a croaking shout of challenge. Yaddle flew toward him, her short-handled lightsaber blazing blue. Maul grinned through a mask of his own blood and raised a hand. The chandelier crashed down on the diminutive Jedi like a meteor, striking her from the air and pulverizing her small body beneath its weight as the sound of breaking crystal roared and tinkled. Its wreckage cascaded over the mosaic tiles, along with the little Jedi's extinguished lightsaber. He could feel the dismay of the others like a thunderous echo in the dark, the opening of a great absence. He threw back his head and laughed, a full-throated cry of mirth and fury.

It was then that he realized that the shooting had stopped. The last echoes of salvo fire rang from the cavernous walls as sheets of masonry came crashing down onto the bodies of the dead. The chandeliers were islands of ruin among the hills and valleys of the battle's casualties, and only the clones and the Jedi remained. His laughter faded. He was alone among the dead, surrounded by ramparts of blood, flesh, durasteel, and bone. The Jedi came for him, climbing the carrion barricades in a silent rush, and he dropped low and ran to meet them. The first blade, Windu's, took him in the shoulder. He jerked back with a roar of agony, smoke pouring from the wound, and Plo Koon stabbed him in the thigh. They were all around him, lunging and slashing, dancing out of reach when he roared and struck at them. His trouser leg was burning where Plo Koon had wounded him. The muscle was already stiffening, hampering his movements as he dodged and ducked, evading as best he could the lances of hard fire that the Jedi sought to kill him with.

Lord Maul's final triumph undid him. He sidestepped a Twi'Lek Jedi's reckless attack, moving easily despite his pain, and drove his saber up through her breastbone. The light going out of her eyes stoked the fire in his chest, infusing him with a trembling might, with the power to crush, to overcome this momentary disaster. He wheeled, a vulturous cry of rage already spilling from his lips as he sensed Kenobi's approach. The bearded Jedi marched toward him without fanfare. Maul feinted, again striking sparks from the floor, but as he shifted his stance, his foot found the Twi'Lek's blood. It slipped, ever so slightly it slipped, and Kenobi lunged. The bearded Jedi's lightsaber burned through his stomach and severed his spine. Maul felt it emerge from his back, felt his crumpling weight pull it up through intestines and kidneys. He snatched at the blade out of pure dumb reflex and then gasped as his fingers went rolling across the ballroom floor, kicked to and fro by the white boots of Clone Troopers. The blade winked out. Kenobi stepped back and let him fall, cinders pluming from his burning robe. The Jedi said something, but Maul's ears could not hear it. His lightsaber was gone, fallen and lost amid the corpses of the slain.

Where was the Force? His ruined lips twitched. It had slipped away, fickle thing. _Faithless._ He clutched at it, trying to fill his empty heart with the toxic heat of its flame. But there was only the cold, and the dark, and the Jedi staring down at him in judgement as he lay with his head pillowed on the Twi'Lek's ruined breast. He reached for them, reached out with his maimed hand to crush and destroy, to complete the butchery he'd begun years ago when his master had turned him loose on the galaxy. They turned their backs on him and walked away.

Maul lay abandoned with the body of his last victim, a woman whose name he would never know, the stink of his ruined organs in his nostrils. He could feel the Force again, but he could not touch it. It waited for him now, waited for his heart to fail, for his body to grow cold, so that it could sink its catlike claws into his soul and drag him down into oblivion.

He would find no comfort there.

* * *

The sound of footsteps on the gore-slicked tiles brought Darth Maul back to consciousness. The clamor of battle continued, shrunken by distance, and he glimpsed starlight through holes blasted in the palace ceiling. Only dumb luck had saved him from the collapse of vast swathes of the roof. Dust sifted down through the air, caught in the pale radiance of Hypori's night sky. And from the starlit darkness, his clothes immaculate, his half-cape secured with a golden chain, Count Dooku emerged to stand over the fallen warrior.  
  
"Did you like that bit about righting old wrongs?" asked the Count. "I thought perhaps I should avoid gloating, hew toward subtlety, but life has so few opportunities for real pleasure. And the timing worked out in the end."

"Qui-Gon was a mystic and a fool," said Dooku. He knelt down beside Maul and pushed a finger into the burn on the younger Sith's shoulder, finding bone. Maul gasped and shivered. Blood flowed around the Count's hand. "He disappointed me gravely, forsook our bond, and trained an artless mediocrity to spite me as much as to care for Kenobi. But he was my Padawan, my disciple, and the son of my heart. I loved him as I have loved no other, and for years I have watched you, the worthless wretch who stole him from me, squirm and kill and blunder through your purposeless life while a great man, for all his flaws, lies dead." His grip hardened. Maul could hardly see for the pain. "You stole my future from me. The dynasty I might have led. The path to power we might have taken. Make no mistake, I will rid this galaxy of everything for which you harbor in your rotten heart even the slightest sentiment. Your master, your nemeses, every peasant with your father's nose on Iridonia. I will find them, and I will make them suffer before death is granted." 

The Count withdrew his finger from Maul's wound. He rose. "I would caution you not to cross me again," he said, sounding almost disappointed, "but I'm afraid the chance had slipped past us. Our time together is at an end. Goodbye, Lord Maul." He stood a moment, a faint smile curling the corners of his mouth, and then he turned and walked away into the drifting dust, vanishing back into the darkness.

Maul lay wheezing at the center of the ruined ballroom, a trembling thing at the heart of a grand and terrible mosaic of wasted life. He tried to turn onto his side, to reach for his lightsaber and end the suffering, but his body had betrayed him. Bile leaked down his chin as he shuddered, torn muscles convulsing, and fought to breathe against the great weight slowly crushing him.

Death was a long time in coming.


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE: ZUGZWANG

DOOKU

She was still slick with the runoff of the cloning vat when he initiated the memory upload protocols. The roar of battle shook the palace around the Count as he watched vital statistics tick past on holo-screens. Sidious's timetable had forced his hand, cut his plans nearly to the quick. At least, after the prolonged misery of watching Maul walk free, the animal had been brought down. And by the Jedi, no less. How well their overdeveloped senses of justice worked to his advantage. He turned from the instrument panels of his hidden laboratory and looked down at his apprentice, newly decanted from her tank with electrodes still chem-grafted to her skull. Sidious, for all his reptilian brilliance, would never truly understand what it was to be Sith. To be ruled by passions beyond crass hate and fear. The Count reached down to brush cold slime from his apprentice's jaw. She stirred in her sleep.

The thunderous cacophony of blaster fire penetrated even the shielded walls of Dooku's laboratory. The Count drew deeply on the Force. It filled him, crushing weakness and hesitation like the grips of a vise. The flawed crystal of his mind was cut and shaped, attuned to the sound of the galaxy's hoary heartbeat. He was the stars, hydrogen furnaces pounding like drums in the void. He was Coruscant, bloated with life and riddled with cancerous industry. He was the Jedi, serene in the knowledge that all things, one day, die. He was the blood in his veins and the thump-hiss of air in the palace vents. He was plasma flashing, boiling oxygen as blaster barrels flared red-hot in firing. He was Maul's corpse. Son-killer. Butcher. Animal. He was Kenobi standing over it, flushed with the first taste of murder done in red wrath. He was Skywalker, raving in a spit-thickened coma in the belly of a Republic cruiser as med droids welded a metal claw to the stump of his arm. And he was Count Dooku, the polished and perfected architecture of decades of lies and deceit. The illusion of a good man. The Force poured through him and out of him, rushing like a dream of water.

He reached out to his apprentice.

Asajj opened her eyes. Tears slid down her pallid cheeks as she drew a deep, shuddering breath. "He hurt me," she said, her voice a strangled whimper. "He was in my head."

A man, raper's eyes red points of light in the darkness of a crumbling temple's sepulcher, lightsaber held loose in one crushing hand. The Force bent around him, giving in to his particular madness, to the warping of his broken mind. Guilt ran like blood from his cloven chest as he strode toward Asajj. Water roared up behind him, animal in its fury, a wave unbreaking and colossal. A wave to wash the world away. His hand closed on her face and he screamed, blowing spit with every word,

IF I AM

Lightning crackled madly, blasting stone and cracking skies.

THE CHOSEN ONE

His fingers tightened. The bones of Asajj's skull cracked. She wailed, smashed hands flopping like pale spiders in the water as the wave towered higher and higher.

THEN WHY

Death rushing down like a stooping hawk.

AM I AFRAID?

Pain.

Dooku opened his eyes. Asajj lay sobbing on the floor of the laboratory, arms folded over her small breasts, knees hooked against her flat stomach. She shook, pale eyes flicking between phantasmal fears. The roar of blaster fire was drawing closer. Dooku knelt beside his apprentice and gathered her into his arms. She pressed her tear-streaked face against his tunic, clutched at him with slender hands as he stood and carried her from the laboratory and into the long, narrow access shaft that led down to his personal docking bay. "It was necessary," he said, though whether to Asajj or himself he did not know. Battle droids, skeletal and silent, watched them pass. "Kill anyone who follows," said the Count.

His solar sailer sat at the ready, a glittering golden insect perched on articulated landing legs. Light from the open bay doors washed the ship, custom-forged by Poggle. The Archduke, even if he was an alien, had proven himself a staunch ally and, in spite of his revolting aspect, a good friend. Dooku crossed the bay's mosaic floor as service droids pulled the landing tackle back from his ship and its boarding ramp slid into place. Footsteps. A murmur in the force. He turned, Asajj trembling in his arms. Kenobi stood at the mouth of the hall, fine clothing scorched and lightsaber crackling in his hand. Confusion and discipline warred in him. Never a philosopher, like Qui-Gon. He had no subtlety. "Why?" he asked. "Why did you let this happen? Coruscant is secure, the Confederacy is in tatters. _Why did you do it?"_

Dooku stepped back onto the sailer's ramp and offered the boy a shrug and a faint smile. "It isn't what it seems," he said.

The ramp retracted, bearing him back into his ship. The airlock door cycled shut and the vessel's droid brain came to life, beginning preflight routines. In a heartbeat the sailer was airborne, arcing out of the bay and into the Hypori dawn. Lances of hard light cracked the sky, flashing down from the Republic fleet in orbit as Dooku sank down onto a leather-padded bench. Asajj nestled close against him, narrow shoulders still shaking. "Master," she murmured as they rocketed toward the cold void, toward the caravan fleet waiting to bear the leaders of the Confederacy away to a secret base on fiery Mustafar.

Dooku kissed his apprentice on her brow. "Hush, child."

Light-years away, voices cried out in the Force. Coruscant burned.

GRIEVOUS

The _Invisible Hand_ burst from hyperspace at the head of the Confederate armada. Its sublight engines roared to life as it dove toward Coruscant's upper atmosphere. Grievous stared at the planet, at the brilliant iron jewel where he had nearly died on the cold floor of the Senate Rotunda. Where he had been recast in steel. Its fleet waited for his, a web of star destroyers silhouetted against the planet's dawn side. Already turbolasers strobed across the gap between armadas as Confederate dreadnoughts and _lucrehulk_ -class merchant battleships dueled Republic destroyers. Swarms of starfighters boiled up from Coruscant and down from Grievous's fleet like vast hoards of locusts.

"Prepare the landers," said Grievous.

"Aye, General," said Mar Tuuk from where he stood beside the Communications podium. He tapped the shoulder of the communications officer, who keyed the fleet-wide address to life. Tuuk leaned down to the transmitter. "Launch the invasion fleet," he said.

Grievous stood. "You have the bridge, Captain," he said, voice sawing at the silence. Coughing, he swung his cloak about his shoulders and strode from the bridge, claws clanking against the Durasteel deck. Laser blasts rocked the _Hand_ as he made his way down into the bowels of his ship His shuttle awaited him in the cavernous docking bay. Beyond shimmering void-shields, space and Coruscant hung like reluctant lovers, the one dead-dark and the other limned in lines of gold. Sidious, who was also Palpatine. Years of bloody, vicious war coming to the tapered murder-point of its protracted goal. The complete and total annihilation of the Jedi Order. He fairly raced across the deck and up the shuttle's gangplank, heartbeat thudding through the sad remnants of his circulatory system. The shuttle's airlock cycled shut and the insectile craft shot out through the void-shields and into the deluge of battle. Grievous sank cross-legged to the shuttle's deck and closed his eyes, letting the thunder of the craft's sublight engines and the rattling hammer of near-atmosphere turbolaser discharge act as anchors to his conscious mind.

Coruscant waited. The Jedi waited in their temple, ignorant of the vengeance speeding toward them and blind to the wrathful eyes of the gods of Kalee. The shuttle sped through a light-hemmed world of strobing radiance and explosions that blossomed like silent flowers. Alongside hundreds of identical transports, sheltered by the H-foil wings of bulk landers, the shuttle dropped through the madness of the orbital engagement and into Coruscant's atmosphere. Friction roared against the hull as it plunged down, down toward a collection of spires and triumphant statuary where fountains burbled in tranquil halls and the children of a thousand worlds learned the ways of the Force.

The Jedi Temple.

A fitting grave for Qymaen Jai Shaleel.

Coruscant's anti-air batteries scissored the sky with lines of hard light. Shuttles burst. Vulture droids came apart like paper flowers. Orbital drop pods sizzled and exploded by the thousands. And still, more and more came on, rained down on the planet by a Confederate fleet still engaged in mortal combat with the Republic navy. Gutted ships sank toward the planet's gravity well like slaughtered behemoths bobbing to the surface of strange oceans. Grievous opened his eyes. His shuttle screamed through lanes of civilian traffic, smashing through several speeders as though they were no more real than febrile bone. The Jedi Temple loomed large in his telescopic vision, limned with data that unspooled itself in graceful Arabesh across the planes of his eyes. Already it stood besieged, its proud towers guttering with smoke. Coruscant's heterodox cityscape flashed by in mad and incomprehensible succession to either side of Grievous's shuttle. The General stood as the steps of the temple drew closer. The howl of atmospheric turbines threatened to burn out his auditory sensors, the last legacy of vanished ears.

Stone and duracrete rushed up to meet the shuttle. Grievous burst from the cockpit in an explosion of pressure-glass. He somersaulted through the air, internal gyros calculating an optimal landing even as the shuttle blew up against the bas relief monoliths that fronted the temple's entrance. Grievous slammed back to solid ground, a vicious cough ripping at his lungs. Battle droids marched in ragged files up the temple steps, and the sound of their magna-peds pounding stone was like a symphony. Grievous threw back his cloak and drew out his sabers, one by one. His trophies. The fruits of the strength of his arms. Screams drifted on the wind. He turned, looking back at the city-world's vast expanse. In the distance, the Senate Round loomed large against the sky. A hot wind whipped the General's cloak.

Time to hunt.

PADME

So like Qui-Gon, and he had almost left her in the same way. Now he lay, pale and muttering, on a cot, loomed over by vulturous medical droids who continually tested and re-tested vital signs and reflexes, fine-tuning his new limb. Anakin's left arm gleamed in the wan light of the med bay, skeletal and droidlike. Padme sat, hands clasped between her knees, at his bedside as the _Salvation_ raced through hyperspace to answer Coruscant's urgent hails. The capital under attack. Fighting in the Senate Rotunda. And here she sat, senior senator for Naboo, dressed in a singlesuit of sterile white at the bedside of a Jedi Knight. She should have been on Coruscant.

On Coruscant, where Palpatine and the Senate were forging a brave new future. A galaxy of order. Of law. Padme stared at her hands. She had voted for the man herself. For Palpatine. She hadn't let Anakin see her unease, but more and more she had felt her trust in the Chancellor slipping away. Farcical elections, and then none at all, term after term sliding by without comment as Palpatine basked in the love of the masses. He was an icon, the face of a wartime Republic on the brink of ruin. Breadlines on Coruscant, drafts instituted to shore up the flagging clone production numbers, the Jedi run ragged and winnowed down to a shadow of their former glory. And the dead. The endless, blood-clotted fields of casualties, clone and citizen, measured against the monolithic scrap heaps and charnel factories of the Confederate war machine.

Death ruled the galaxy, serene and complacent.

"He's in danger."

Padme looked up. Anakin, pale and blue-lipped, stared back at her from his sickbed. "Palpatine," he said, his voice a husky rasp. "He's in danger. I can feel it."

"We're going to Coruscant," said Padme, numbed by shock. What was it, to feel the echoes of things to come? She herself had been marked for Jedi training as a child, but that path had fallen away before the thunder of politics and the gold-slicked influence of the Naberrie family. But for her father, she might be lying where Anakin was now, or dead under Confederate guns on some nameless ball of rock. So many little turns.

Anakin's eyes flickered shut. Padme stood. The man's face was ravaged, his cheekbones suddenly raw, his eyes deeply lined, his mouth pinched into snarled lines by some angry dream. What had happened to him on Tattooine? Sitting, alone and terrified, on the ship, she had imagined a hundred ways he might die in the bitter winds of Tattooine. And then the hate. So powerful, so hot and close. Like a second heart, beating just outside her skin. Padme trembled at the memory of it, a flush creeping up her neck to color her cheeks. She had felt the center of him in that instant, the vulnerability and power dwelling paradoxically beneath a hide of dry wit and discipline. A sea of unlimited potential hemmed in by fear, by Jedi-stunted emotions.

Padme stood and moved closer to the cot. She put a hand on Anakin's arm, feeling the harsh rattle of his pulse. She thought she had some inkling of why Palpatine kept Anakin so close, especially when the galactic media was about in force. He wasn't just naturally likeable, or famous, or powerful. He was something else altogether. All those rumors floating around him. Whispers of Jedi prophecy. Qui-Gon's somber words. _He is the chosen one._ A conduit to the will of the Living Force. A tremulous smile curved the Senator's lips. She leaned down, her breast brushing Anakin's arm as her lips touched his ear. "We'll do such great things," she said.

"Watch and see."

OBI-WAN

The Confederate Palace burned. Turbolaser batteries hammered back and forth between Hypori and the cold dark of space. Obi-Wan stood in the deserted hangar, lightsaber still lit in his sweat-damp hand. His heart hammered at his breast as he watched Dooku's solar sailer diminish into the distance. He could still see Maul's spine burning, could still see the vitriol in the Sith Lord's eyes as he lay dying, his jaw lolling against his breast. Nearly a third of the Confederate High Command was now under lock and key, hostages of the merciless Senate Guard. Others had been caught in the crossfire of the ongoing battle for control of the palace. They lay smoking on the marble floor of the ballroom, yet more corpses to heap at the foot of the Order.

Obi-Wan felt sick at heart. Still, like a distant voice, he heard the litany of Anakin's misery. Something had happened to his friend. Something unspeakable. He was hurt and confused, caught between conflicting worlds. Obi-Wan deactivated his lightsaber, the sounds of battle still echoing in his ears. He should go back, to help his brethren secure the Palace. His stomach clenched at the thought of more fighting. He sat down, his back against the wall, and schooled his mind to stillness. The Force ebbed and flowed around him, tainted as it had been for years by the oil-slick film of the Dark Side. Still, there was peace in its embrace.

Silence.

Mace's voice cut through Obi-Wan's reverie. "Coruscant is under attack," he said as he strode down the corridor toward where Obi-Wan sat.

Obi-Wan stood, the Force leaking out of him like water through a sieve. He met the older man's eyes. "Half the fleet is in orbit over the capital," he said. "How could they possibly have mounted an attack?" Fear iced his heart. He knew the answer before Mace spoke.

"Not the planet," said the Jedi Master, his voice grave. "The Temple. Grievous is in the Temple."


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN: THE DEAD WILL BE SHROUDED IN WHITE

GRIEVOUS

There was a monster in the halls of the Jedi Temple. Its clawed feet stamped prints in blood on marmoreal floors, defacing ancient grandeur with the crass revenge of murderous appetite. The monster broke bones. It drank blood. Lightsabers flashed in the shadows, describing new geometries, circumscribing limits between limbs and bodies. Jedi dueled the beast. Knights riding out to slay the dragon. Cauterized meat slapped the floor. General Grievous, cloak hanging scorched and ruined from his shoulders, boiled onward through the darkest recesses of the Temple. The enemy was everywhere. Light drenched whole swaths of darkness, seeking always for some measure of clarity, for a last appeal to the sanity of well-lit places. Grievous walked, wading through tides of blood, and no matter how thin the slivered light became he stood always within its compass. The Jedi cried out. They fled from him, or stood and died. He screamed war-chants at their corpses as he tore their flesh, desecrating the sad offal of their remains for no reason but purest spite. The gods, he knew, were with him.

He was a son of Kalee.

Saliva leaked in ropey yellow strands from the chin of Grievous's mask. He breathed deep, hacking out thick breaths through the spit clogging the artifice of his throat. A rattling growl escaped him to echo down the ornate halls. A Twi'Lek burst from a branching corridor, pirouetting through Makashi's opening forms. Servos twitched in Grievous's mechanical arms as droid microbrains computed angles of attack and possible parries, feeding a welter of information to the General at a speed greater than thought. Grievous crushed the Twi'Lek's hand around the grip of his weapon and drove two sabers through the blue-skinned alien's stomach. He let the dead Jedi drop, storing his saber in his cloak, and stepped over his corpse. He loped down the corridor, swift-footed and mad with the scent of blood. Two teenaged Padawans came at him in a dead rush, sabers flashing. Sluggish. Grievous spun through a mad somersault, a clawed foot slamming into the skull of the older of the two. Teeth shattered. The body flopped back against the wall, blood bursting from its ruptured braincase as Grievous landed in a crouch and, lunging, drove a saber through the other Padawan's mouth. Eyes melted. Brains cooked. Grievous yanked the weapon free just in time to parry the furious assault of a Whipid Jedi. "DIE!" he bellowed as he hacked the Whipid's arms off in a brutal spray of plasma. The alien Jedi howled, stumbling back. Grievous took his head off with a scissored slash.

In the echoing halls he screamed the blood-prayers of Kalee. He saw his mask in the marble walls, saw the gods howling for new flesh behind his callous eyes. He killed those who came for him with the strength of his iron hands and the hate that festered in his heart. Blood and viscera slapped the mosaic floors of the Room of Fountains. Grievous left the lightsabers of the dead where they fell. What need had he for trophies any longer, with death so close at hand? Like a lover it murmured to him, telling him where to find his foes. _Look there,_ Death husked into his long-ruined ears. _Find me waiting in the eyes of your victims._

Grievous screamed murder as he charged through blood and gore, skidding in the detritus of his carnal celebration. He blocked the blaster bolts of frightened guards, hair-trigger computers directing the steps of his violent dance. His cloak, a burned and ragged thing, flared around him like the wing of some gross bird. A towering Wookiee dropped down from the vaulted ceiling as he crossed a dimly-lit arcade where fountains muttered softly one to another. _There,_ said Death. Grievous roared, his monster's voice strained by the sheer volume of his hate. He met the Wookiee's overhand blow in the crux of his upper two sabers. Plasma flared sun-white, bleaching the huge alien's dark fur. It skipped back outside the range of his scissoring riposte, roared a challenge and died with his lower left blade buried in its smoking breasts. He withdrew, snapping back into form from his vicious lunge without an instant's hesitation. "WHO CAN KILL ME?" he screamed to no one and nothing.

 _I can,_ said Death.

The Temple echoed to the clank of metal on marble. Grievous scuttled between floors, clawing his way up blaster-scarred columns like some gore-draped beetle to dole out butchery and mayhem. He lost count of those he felled. Dozens. Scores. They were cloth. They were rotten leather. They were leprous skin. He was a knife heated to the melting point, a brand meant for the hides of those lesser than he. The only weapon in the galaxy. _I am the only weapon._

He hacked through them like murder given will and form, a thing transcending flesh. It seemed he spilled not blood but hate onto the polished floors and aged carpets. His screams ripped at the ruins of his vocal cords, as much for his own loss as for the glory of the slaughter. Blades burned his armored shell. He howled mad laughter and cut a bloody swath through echoing halls and silent meditation chambers. _This is well,_ said Death. And at last, battered and hacking up phlegm with every breath, he lurched through a curtained doorway and found himself in a nursery. Little eyes watched him from the shadows, fearful and teary. Small voices cry out in fear. A Mon Cal boy, older than the others, stood trembling in front of two furry Talz infants. The Mon Cal held a child in his arms. A Kalee female, scarcely old enough to walk, tiny claws waving at the air. The Mon Cal clutched his charge tight against his chest, wide wet eyes alive with fear. Grievous stood framed in the doorway, towering over small and frightened souls. He took a step toward the child, so like his own offspring. The children of his sister-wife, his second heart.

Hesitation.

 _Paint the way to Heaven with their blood,_ said Death.

And then, without warning, he was yanked from the floor and dashed against the ceiling. The housing for his organs cracked with a sharp report. He crashed back to the floor, lightsabers biting marble and whirling drapes. Unseen hands closed around his legs and dragged him out into the hall by main force. The strength was impossible, the focus complete. He caught a glimpse of yellow eyes, of green skin worn by time and care, of a drab brown robe and a gnarled cane clutched in clawed hands. His arms snapped outward, rigid and trembling with augmetic musculature. He drifted up from the floor, held like a butterfly in the palm of the little Master's soul. It was an ancient thing, sea-deep and eon-wide. Grievous's lightsabers pivoted of their own volition, facing inward toward the oozing durasteel plates of his chest and thoracic cavity. His body, motivated by a thousand ingrained subsystems and droid augmentations, warred against the crushing omnipresence of the Force. His mind felt the blistering winds of Kalee, the soft touch of a child's hand on his callused palm.

"Terrible, is your hurt," said Yoda, his voice rough with sorrow. "A mercy, this is."

Heartbeat, flutter-quick. The General's atrophied muscles twitched behind his mask. The last miserable inch of Qymaen Jai Shaleel. He closed his eyes. "I wouldn't have killed them," he said. The heat of the plundered Jedi weapons, fruits of his greedy crusade, beat against his Durasteel carapace. Though his body still warred, hydraulics squealing as mechanized joints hissed, his mind raced out and south to the trackless seas of Kalee, where Ronderu drifted. The memory of his lips moved behind scorched metal and his monster's voice rasped out in the silence of the hall.

"Send my soul to heaven."

Stolen sabers flashed, scissoring air. Two plunged toward his eyes, two toward his heart. Burning, fire-bright and noxious. Pain. Open arms welcomed him, holding him close against Ronderu. Skin to skin. Sister. Lover. Wife.

_I am home at last._

And then nothing.

ANAKIN

His hand ached. His hand was gone. Constantly, he had to remind himself. Sitting on a sterile cot in the white-walled med bay of the cruiser _Salvation._ What a sick twist of fate, that it had been the ship to take him away from Tattooine. The holonet recordings of the slaughter in the Jedi Temple played silently before him on a projector plinth. Palpatine was giving a speech. The surgeons had taken his mechanical hand, his false hand, away for adjustment. He could not seem to listen to the words the Chancellor was speaking. He made a fist of the hand that wasn't there.

_...thousands dead, civilian and Jedi both, in the terrible tragedy of Qymaen Jai Shaleel's suicidal assault on the Jedi Temple. That their murderer has been brought to justice is a poor balm for their grieving loved ones. Even now, I am told, bodies are being recovered from the crash site where the murderous General's troopships breached the planetary defense grid to lay siege to the temple precincts. In these troubled times, we must look..._

Anakin ignored the med droid adjusting his nutrient drip. Its spidery limbs plugged and unplugged diodes connected to the bay's operating computers with calm, arachnid efficiency. Padmé was asleep in a chair beside his bed, curled up like a child beneath a thin white blanket. It was past midnight by the ship's clock, running on Coruscant Senatorial District time. Anakin closed his eyes. He saw the pale woman's face floating before him, saw her lips peel back from her uneven teeth in a scream of agony. He saw her wrists snap like twigs, felt the rotten-wood snap of bones succumbing to the pressure of his will. He had known the Force, as Qui-Gon had said he would, and it had consumed him down to the marrow in his bones.

He was not worthy. He was not the Chosen One, or if he was then the prophecy was wrong. What could he bring to the Force but pain and ruination? What could he be but a plague, a pox on the Jedi Order. No. He had to stop it, to shut himself off from that path. He opened his eyes and the bland, antiseptic walls of the sickbay replaced Asajj's screaming face. Strange, how it was so much clearer in his mind's eye than his mother's. The various readout surrounding his cot blinked without apparent rhyme or reason. On the holo-screen Palpatine was still speaking, exhorting Coruscant's citizens to strength and acceptance.

Palpatine. The realization washed like perfumed water over Anakin's sweat-slicked skin, washing away the scum of worry and paranoia. The Chancellor would know what to do. He always knew what to do. All Anakin had to do was ask. His eyes flicked to Padmé, still sleeping. _We'll do such great things,_ she'd said. Anakin remembered the wet strength of her hips against his, her lower lips around him. He reached out to her in the Force, his mind brushing against hers. Her thoughts eddied slowly in the murk of her dreams. Peace. Love. Satisfaction.

_We must face this atrocity with strength. We must oppose Separatist terrorism with the iron wall of this Republic's united, democratic citizenry. You are the strength and lifeblood of this Republic, and so long as you stand defiant no cheap murderer can strike against us and call our spirit broken._

Palpatine, captured in profile by a holo-recorder, looked resolute but weary. His robes were plain, his hair uncombed. Anakin's cheeks burned with embarrassment at the thought of how stupid he'd been, how carelessly he'd handled his assignment to protect the Senator. The barbs of his conscience pricked at him, driving him to distraction as he tried again and again to find solace in the floating embrace of the Force. Meditation would not come. His thoughts were unquiet and restless. With a wave of his hand he turned off the holo-projector and sank back against his pillows, washed in the ceaseless thrum of the _Salvation_ 's hyperdrive.

"You look tired, Anakin."

"I am tired," said Anakin.

"We'll be back on Coruscant soon." Her cool, smooth fingers slipped through the fingers of his natural one. "Things will be different. You'll see."

 _Yes,_ thought Anakin as the furnace deep in the pit of his stomach snarled and crackled, burning flesh and bone. _Things will be different._

OBI-WAN

They lay in sheeted rows in the Temple's echoing repositorium. Forty-seven Jedi, arms folded and eyes closed as though in peaceful slumber. Obi-Wan stood with Yoda, Shaak Ti, Plo Koon and Mace Windu, his ears ringing as the elderly Jocasta Nu read a eulogy the words of which clattered to the floor like tiny weights of lead. Little marbles, mourning wound up in words and scattered over smooth stone to roll away, into the shadows. Between the sheeted lines. The glorious dead. Hundreds of Jedi, some badly wounded, stood in silent rows to either side of the dead. Obi-Wan held the Force close, building of its light a wall to hem the ragged edges of his mind. Too late to help the fallen. Too slow to gauge the Count's plans, or his true character. Why would Dooku strike so brutally against the Jedi? So many dead. At least the children had been spared.

Jocasta Nu fell silent, folding her wrinkled hands. She bowed her head. Nine Masters in black mourning robes moved silently between the dead, anointing each sheeted body with fragrant oils. They bent to press their lips to cold foreheads. Obi-Wan thought of Qui-Gon.

"There is no death," said Yoda, his rough voice echoing in the repositorium. "There is the Force." He knelt by the head of a Mon Cal Padawan, no older than fifteen, and pressed his lips to the girl's cold, greyish forehead. "Rejoice now, we should," he said, "for those who before us have become one with its will. Fortunate, they are."

 _Maul dead, the Separatists thrown into disarray, Dooku on the run._ Obi-Wan passed a hand over his face. _The scheming vrelt. I should have seen it from the beginning._

And there was Anakin. The _Salvation_ had sent word of his recovery, and of his maiming. What had happened to him on Tattooine? The distant echo of his pain still resounded from the walls of Obi-Wan's perceptions. He had known the boy, the man, now, for nearly a decade and never had he felt anything so raw, so poisoned with emotion from him. Wildness, sometimes. Like Qui-Gon. Anger more often than was proper. But never hate.

"Rejoice," said Yoda. Tears rolled down his furrowed cheeks.

Grievous's shuttle lay lodged in the teeth of the temple's entrance like an insect half-swallowed by an unfortunate swoop racer. Obi-Wan watched the removal efforts each morning before the day had really begun. Clone troopers labored to disassemble the Neimoidian craft, loading its component parts onto antigrav sleds for transport to the landfills south of the Senatorial quarter. It seemed an age since he had really looked at Coruscant, since he had seen the fliers that blew in the wakes of the ceaseless traffic and the war posters plastered on the walls of high-rises, businesses and tenement slums. Three words lettered in bold Arabesh script under Palpatine's bold profile and the Bendu Wheel of the Republic. _Strong. Safe. Secure._

Bread lines stretched down the elevated streets. The people looked gaunt and harried, rushing between destinations with eyes downcast and shoulders hunched as though to ward off blows that might rain down from the sky at any moment. There were millions of them. Billions. How many lives did Coruscant hold within its metal heart? Obi-Wan stood on the steps of the Temple and watched them until long after the sun had gone down and the false twilight of Coruscant's lights had consumed whatever dark the planet had known before its subsumation by the Republic.

Any day now the _Salvation_ would return with Anakin and Senator Naberrie aboard. Obi-Wan could still sense the raw echoes of Anakin's collapse. He would have to stand for inquiry when he returned. Half the Council had felt his rage and desolation, and they were concerned. Concerned and frightened. Anakin's strength was well-known, but the tide of unfettered power they had sensed on Coruscant had been beyond anything they had imagined when Qui-Gon had brought the sardonic freedman before them years before.

"What would you do?" Obi-Wan asked the night. "I was always lost without you, Master."

But the night did not reply.

There was so much left undone. He had failed to uncover the assassins behind the attempt on the Senator's life, had failed to discern Dooku's true purpose when they had spoken, had failed his apprentice, his son, his brother. He had given in to his anger. Alone on the steps of the Jedi Temple, Obi-Wan sat down cross-legged on the cracked, cool marble and closed his eyes. The force closed in around him like air after a thunderclap, filling him with light.

_I am a leaf driven by the storm._

Coruscant pounded and pulsed around him.

_I am a drop of rain on a child's hand._

The stars murmured in distant voices.

_I am the Force._

PALPATINE

Skywalker was changed. It was obvious, just watching the boy limp up the Rotunda's steps, ignoring the holonet reporters that swarmed around him like kreetles. Palpatine watched the Jedi through his private holocam feed. Anakin's shoulders were bent, his head raised in defiance of the pain that smoked in his breast. His false hand clenched and unclenched at his side. It was not entirely as Palpatine had expected. But then, nothing had gone quite according to plan. He should have foreseen that Grievous would disobey his orders and assault the Temple rather than the Senate. The creature's hatred of the Jedi had been lunatic in proportion. Palpatine rubbed at his temple. The roaches never scuttled where you wanted them to. It seemed an immutable law of the universe. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. It was too early for Skywalker to falter, too early to unleash him on the Jedi. Grievous's slaughter in the Temple had tipped public sympathies back into the Order's camp, for the time being at least. Care had to be taken to deprive them of their momentary gain. The war had almost accomplished everything Palpatine had intended.

The end of the farce, the final curtain call, was drawing near. Palpatine waved the holocam off and spun his high-backed seat back to his desk where the drudgery of modern governance awaited him. Reports from the Outer Rim sieges, materiel memos, Senatorial requests for budgetary amendments, a friendly message from Mace Windu that alluded just short of treason to the expiration of Palpatine's sixth unelected term as Supreme Chancellor in a few months. Palpatine smiled at that. Windu would have to be dealt with sooner or later, but the days of elections and pandering to the starry-eyed masses were over. The Galaxy was emerging from the crucible that he, Palpatine, Dark Lord of the Sith, had constructed for its purification. Beneath his rule it would be strong, secure and entirely indomitable.

The intercom chimed and the bright, clear voice of Palpatine's receptionist said: "Jedi Skywalker is here to see you, Chancellor. He doesn't have an appointment..."

"Let him in," said Palpatine, standing.

Another chime. The doors to the outer art gallery slid open and Anakin stepped through. To any other, save perhaps Kenobi, the young Jedi would have looked composed. His face was unlined, his stride easy. He wore dark robes over a plain roughspun tunic and loose leggings, every inch the meditative Jedi. To Palpatine, though, the misery in Skywalker was obvious. No two beings in the Galaxy's history had ever been more intimately joined, more essentially connected than they two. In a house in the swamps of Naboo, under the hermetic and obsessive eyes of Plagueis, Palpatine had done something unprecedented in the annals of the Force's deepest mysteries. He could still see the woman, Shmi, huddled in her pit beneath the gardens. He could still feel the Force coursing through him as it had years later when he had turned his power on his master, when he had slashed Plagueis's head from his shoulders and ripped out his beating heart. He had eaten it in the driving rain.

"Anakin, my boy," said Palpatine, adopting the fatherly tone he always used with the younger man, layered now with understanding and tender affection. "You look tired."

Skywalker's flat gaze met the Chancellor's. "I met the Sith on Tattooine," he said.

 _You met a shrieking lunatic,_ thought Palpatine. Asajj was no more a Sith than he was a fiscal conservative. Dooku's little pet had been through too many clones, too many agonizing rebirths. Whatever potential she had once possessed was gone, now. Palpatine stepped around his desk, but he did not go to Anakin. The boy stood on the threshold between Palpatine's foyer and his office proper. He was tall. When had he grown so tall? "The Sith," he said, tone curious.

"I killed her," said Anakin. Dull, flat declaration.

 _He means his mother, not the Ventress bitch._ "You did what the situation demanded, I'm sure. Your judgment has always been excellent, Anakin."

"I abandoned my mission." His voice nearly cracked. "I put my own selfish interests before the Senator's safety."

 _Punish me,_ he might have cried. _Set me back on the straight path, father._

Palpatine sighed and let his face fall into an understanding smile. "Anakin-"

The dam burst. An ornamental bust of Darth Revan, a figure sadly lost to most Galactic historians and certainly to anyone with an open invitation to Palpatine's office, standing by the window that formed the eastern wall of Palpatine's office exploded. Papers flew from the Chancellor's desk. A tumbler of half-drunk brandy flew across the room and dashed itself to shards against the wall. Skywalker's face twitched, pale and bloodless. "I let my mother die!" he screamed. "I watched the life go out of her!" His eyes bulged. Spit flecked his lips.

Palpatine walked toward the boy through the rippling air. Random bursts of Force energy upset the delicate organization of his office, but he spared no attention for any of it. Relics and baubles could be replaced. Skywalker could not. Palpatine closed the distance between them and pulled Anakin into a fierce embrace. The room rattled, then fell still. Moments later the boy's shoulders began to shake. "We all lose those we love most, Anakin," said Palpatine. "Your mother is with the Force."

_Think of darling Padmé with her big, dark eyes and round little breasts. Think of her, and know the fear of the grave looming behind her._

"My mother is dead," said Anakin, his voice choked and phlegmy. His face was buried in Palpatine's shoulder. "She's dead. I reached out for her, tried to help her, but she slipped...slipped away. I felt her go. I felt her light leave her."

Palpatine hugged the boy more tightly. He had never enjoyed physical contact. So tedious to express one's self with kisses and caresses when the Force waited just beneath the surface, a sea of meaning aching for release. "Everything slips away from us in the end, my boy," he said. "No one can defy death, not even the Jedi."

_There. Let that seed fester. Not even the Jedi...but perhaps the Sith?_

They stood there together in silence for a while, and then Anakin pulled away from Palpatine's embrace and stepped back. His mask was back in place, his sunken cheeks and unhealthy pallor hidden behind a veneer of iron resolve. "I should report to the Council," he said mechanically. "I came straight here, I don't know why...it wasn't proper of me."

"Anakin," said Palpatine, layering his voice with mild reproach and deep, unspoken love, "you are always welcome here. Come and see me tomorrow, after my morning appointments." He squeezed the younger man's hand. "Until then, may the Force be with you."

The young Jedi nodded stiffly, then left. The doors slid shut behind his trailing robes and Palpatine sank down onto the edge of his desk and crossed his legs. _May the Force be with you,_ he thought. _May it whisper a lover's filthy secrets in your ear, may it tempt you with impossible knowledge, may it steal cat-footed after you, hounding your every step until there is nothing but the Force and you are blind and deaf, begging for release from the prison the Jedi have made for you._

Idiots. Blinded and blinkered by tradition. Qui-Gon might have seen it, had he lived, but the Order was far too entrenched in their ancient rituals and self-righteous pursuit of justice to see what was wrong with Anakin Skywalker. He was not like them. The Force did not live within him. He lived within it, and its roaring current would soon consume him.

Unless he had proper guidance. Someone to direct his hand, to shape his thoughts. A teacher.

A master.

_My young apprentice..._

RUNE

He sat with the others in the open-air conference room of the climate-shielded hacienda perched on the shore of one of Mustafar's famous magma lakes. The hacienda was a long, low building roofed in elaborate cold-cell clay tiles. Its walls were made of tique-wood, varnished to a deep gloss, and screens of ricepaper composed its doors. The remaining leaders of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, seated around a long boma-wood table with an empty seat at its head, looked smaller, somehow, than they had on the day Dooku had led them in declaring their separation from the Republic. Rune Haako, Viceroy of the Trade Federation, still remembered that night. He had been drunk on Corellian brandy and Rodian dreamwine, reeling through the halls of Wilhuff Tarkin's private manse on Eriadu's fanatically-landscaped northern continent, a glorified backyard for the Senator's powerful family. Sometime during the blur of narcotics, dancing girls and fireworks displays he had wandered off by himself to be tastefully sick in the gardens on the manse's grounds. Now even the memory of heaving up alcohol and pickled trill-finches into Wilhuff Tarkin's hedgerows seemed preferable to the prospect of continuing along the path that night had set him on.

Rebellion. Nute really had been an idiot. Who were they to rebel? Rune cast a jaded, hungover glance at his fellow conspirators. Wat Tambor, mumbling quietly to himself as he adjusted the dials on his environment suit. Shu Mai, slender even for a Gossam, her huge eyes darting nervously around the room. Po Nudo, the belligerent, hideous Aqualish delegate. San Hill, a spindly Muun with gold glinting on his nimble fingers and a jeweler's loupe screwed into place over one of his small, beady black eyes as though he meant to assess Mustafar inch-by-inch before selling it wholesale on the Galactic Market. Only Archduke Poggle of Geonosia cut anything like a martial figure, and he was approaching senescence at high speed. _We aren't conquerors,_ thought Rune, feeling queasy. _We aren't heroes or villains or soldiers._

_We're fucking salesmen._

Grievous and Darth Maul were dead. That was the worst of it brought to a close, but what now? Surrender? It was an appealing idea, but there would be reprisals. Harsh ones. Firing squads broadcast live on the Holonet. Rune swallowed. He pursed his square, lipless mouth and laced his fingers together. Even in the climate-regulated afternoon shade of the hacienda his brocade robes and miter of office were stiflingly hot. Had Nute's extravagant dress not become so symbolic of the Trade Federation's power Rune would have opted for something simpler. Still, sacrifices had to be made.

A pressure door hissed open, releasing a blast of hot air into the room along with the elegant figure of Count Dooku, trailed by his slouched and worm-white apprentice, the shaven female. Ventress looked even less healthy and well-adjusted than usual. Her prominent veins stood out like quartz deposits against her marble skin and her lips were a livid pinkish-white. Her eyes seemed tinged with yellow. Dooku, though, was undiminished. The Count, dressed immaculately in black and with his beard and hair both well-groomed, strode across the room to take his seat the table's head as though nothing in the Galaxy were out of sorts. _But wait, no,_ thought Rune, _I seem to remember an assault on our fortress and the undoing of all our plans. Ah, yes, there's the wrinkle in the whole pretty affair._

"Your Excellency," ventured San Hill, squinting at the Count through his loupe, "we had not thought to see you so soon."

Poggle clucked and sputtered something in his repulsive Geonosian tongue.

_We had not thought to see you at all._

In truth, Rune would have been queerly relieved had Dooku not made their rendezvous. At least then he would have had an excuse to descend into screaming panic without the misery of false hope and Dooku's charming oration to lead him onward toward the prize that had doomed Nute. _Free trade. The hyperspace lanes untaxed, given over to innovation and enterprise. A new government with beings loyal to you at its helm._

Money.

"I was delayed," said Dooku in his honeyed tones. Behind him, Asajj twitched and glowered at the assembled leadership council. He turned to Poggle and replied to the Geonosian's query in the Archduke's own language, his rendition of the tongue's myriad clicks, whistles and hisses surprisingly fluid and natural. Poggle nodded, apparently satisfied. Dooku's iron gaze flicked back to the hushed and waiting council. "We have suffered a setback," he said. "The attack on Hypori cost us many lives and shook this fledgling government to its core.

"But we survived. We endure, and while we draw breath Palpatine cannot rest easy on his throne. The Republic's own forces did not go unbloodied during our exchange, and with the Outer Rim campaigns proceeding so favorably I have taken the liberty of ordering the Rimward fleets deployed in-system. Within the year we will be in a position to strike directly at Coruscant itself, to bring the war to the Chancellor's doorstep and the Republic to its knees. We will triumph, my friends."

Rune felt it, that insistent _shhh_ -ing of his better instincts and impulses Dooku's speeches always seemed to inspire. Of course they could win. The others saw it, felt it. He could smell it in the caustic musk of their pheromones, see it in their flushed hides and agitated postures. As the Count continued with his speech Rune felt his doubts slough away like so much dead skin. Nute had been a fool, too greedy and grasping, but _he_ , Rune Haako, was older and wiser. Cooler heads prevailed, he'd always said. Soon, he would have everything.

Outside the hacienda the lava flowed in sluggish whirlpools, bleeding light into the ash-choked sky where dark clouds churned.

PADME

"I know you loved her," Padmé said to Anakin as she ran her fingers through his dark, sweat-damp curls. They lay together on her bed in an apartment she had engaged in one of Coruscant's less public residence towers. Anakin's head was pillowed on her bare thighs. He had removed his artificial hand and the livid stump of his injury still dripped beads of blood onto the sandsilk sheets. Padmé said nothing, though. He had returned to her broken after his interview with the Council, barely able to stand. "I lost my mother when I was young."

_I lost my Queen, and Qui-Gon. Everything dies. Everything leaves._

He kissed her fingers. "I can forget," he said quietly, "when I'm with you."

Padme leaned down and kissed him. He responded hungrily, twisting like an eel to straddle her. His stump disturbed her almost as much as the rest of him enticed, but she ignored it, put it aside in favor of a vision of the future. Anakin's tongue slid past her lips. She moaned.

Soon, very soon, he would rise to the Council. Soon the war would be over, Dooku and the others arrested and brought to trial on Coruscant. No more carnage, no more ruin. The Republic would need new leaders, men and women made for peacetime. Palpatine had had his day in the sun. Let him retire to some villa on Naboo to live out the rest of his days gardening and drinking wine in the sunlight. Let him fade into textbooks.

"I love you," said Anakin as he entered her. His skin fairly crackled with power. She could feel him holding back even as he began to move, to grind himself against her.

A flush crawled up Padmé's neck. "I know," she said, grinning fiercely. Her hips bucked against his first thrust, matching him. "Oh!" she cried, lightning coursing through her veins.

She wasn't stupid. Her brutal taskmaster of a grandfather, a retired lecturer on the Galactic Circuit, and six years at the Royal Naboo Political Academy, to say nothing of her ruthless streak and formidable intellect, had seen to that. Palpatine had placed her close to Anakin for a reason. He'd hoped they'd become lovers, perhaps so he could use it as leverage against them. Well let him have his leverage. Let him think them besotted and blind.

"Oh!" cried Padmé, manicured nails gripping the sheets. "Anakin!"

_We're going to change everything._


End file.
